Clause 36 - Application by defendant for trial to be conducted without jury
Criminal Justice Bill
9:10 am
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) moved the amendment only formally, because requiring the reasons to be given for the application seems to be of some importance. However, a large number of other amendments can be considered, including some tabled by the Liberal Democrats. I note that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) has only just arrived, so I shall try to hold the fort until other members of the Committee feel able to participate.
A large number of Conservative amendments have been tabled to clause 36, which may be one of the most important in the Bill. First, we must ask whether a defendant should be able to apply for his trial to be conducted without a jury. The Committee will have to give careful consideration to that, especially as the clause provides for certain exceptions. For instance, someone may make such an application but find that he is denied the right. That is a matter of concern—an issue of principle is involved—and I hope that the Minister will respond.
If the Government take the view that trial by judge alone is so satisfactory that individuals should be able to seek it as an alternative to jury trial, why in the same breath do they seek to deny it to certain categories of individual? As I read the clause, they seem to think that the public would be unhappy with such a move, and that public opinion would be that justice was not being done if the trial took place by judge alone. That is one of the key issues that we have to consider.
The Minister will be aware that the official Opposition have grave reservations about the provisions relating to trial by jury. That said, however, we should consider each provision in turn because I am mindful of the fact that they may each have different merits and because each raises different problems. The principle that someone should be able to choose trial by judge alone is perhaps the most innocuous. After all, the jury system exists principally to provide a defence and protection to the person who is to be tried.
If an individual has a preference for trial by judge alone, it may be a circumstance that Parliament should be willing to permit. The problem is that, when one starts looking at the details, it seems that the Government have an uneasy sense that in some circumstances it could cause problems. They have answered their own question: there are compelling grounds for continuing to have jury trial for all indictable offences and the procedure of mixing and matching and allowing choice is undesirable. We need to examine that issue.
Amendment No. 232 is preliminary to amendments Nos. 233 and 234, which are designed to enable the Committee to consider subsections (6) and (7). Should we, for instance, deny somebody jury trial under subsection (6) because he has held an office or employment concerned with civil or criminal justice? Can the Minister explain the rationale for that approach? It might be that people would be anxious that there would be too pally a relationship between the individual and the person trying him. I can think of one instance in which a disgraced Crown court judge appeared in front of a stipendiary magistrate when the time came for his disgrace to be completed. Nobody said at that time that there was anything untoward about it.
Subsection (7) concerns a different issue, denying jury trial in instances in which the facts concern the administration of justice being brought into disrepute. I find that concept esoteric. The closest real life example that I can think of is that of an individual who is being tried for bribing a judge. It is difficult to
imagine any other circumstance in which it would apply. The anxiety that I experience in considering the provision is that the phraseology, although doubtless designed to address a particular instance, could be applied far more widely than is intended. For instance, do the Government mean by ''the administration of justice'' that the case of somebody who had been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice—probably not something that concerned his relationship with the judge, although it might have involved the intimidation of witnesses—would constitute a circumstance in which trial by jury had to take place?
We could even experience the state of affairs in which somebody was denied trial by judge alone for having attempted to nobble a jury, but at the same time—under a later clause—his trial, after a further attempt at jury nobbling, would end up with the judge alone. There are inconsistencies in the wording that could lead to bizarre circumstances. The Committee must, so far as it can, predict and anticipate the bizarre. Otherwise we shall end up with a very strange system.
Amendment No. 251 covers the distinction between a judge and a recorder. It appears that a person would be covered, and would be denied jury trial, only in circumstances in which he was employed in a judicial capacity. What about those who fulfil a range of judicial offices that are not described as employment? Are they supposed to be covered? The Minister might want to consider that. Perhaps I am wrong, and the phrasing of the clause does cover such a person.
Amendment No. 250 is a probing amendment, concerning the post of office holder, unless it comes within subsection (7). To whom is that supposed to apply? If the Minister could help us on that, it would initiate the debate. Similarly, amendment No. 235 seeks to leave out subsection (8). What other exceptions might make it necessary in the public interest to conduct a trial with a jury if those exceptions are not contained in subsections (6) and (7)? That is an important consideration for the Committee.
Amendment No. 236 seeks to leave out subsection (9), which states:
''In this section 'the administration of civil or criminal justice' includes the investigation and prosecution of offences and the carrying out or enforcement of an order or sentence of a court.''
Subsection (9) has been included, I assume, to cover a wide range of officers. Does it cover prison officers, for instance? Are they part of the procedure by which a ''sentence of a court'' is carried out or does it apply only to an officer of the court, such as a tipstaff? We need clarification from the Minister on the meaning of those phrases. I hope that in initiating this debate—although I am sorry not to have heard the hon. Member for Nottingham, North speak on his amendment—I have at least set the scene for discussion. It is clear that the more one studies the detail of this clause, the more complicated it becomes.
The Government started out with the fairly simple view before the Bill was published that if people
wanted trial by judge alone without a jury there was no reason that they should not have it. It would be less costly and the Government were sure that such trials would deliver the same standard of justice as trial by jury. It has ended up in fact as an extremely complicated mishmash; seeking on one hand to give that right to a defendant but on the other denying it to him in certain circumstances.
I hope that with the Minister's help we can make a detailed examination of the clause to see first whether it needs to be improved. When we have done that, we can examine its principle in the context of the other proposals to reduce trial by jury and to introduce trial by judge alone.