Clause 37 - Application by prosecution for
Criminal Justice Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I hope that none of us will think that.
The Liberal Democrat amendments seek to restrict applications for trial without jury in such cases. Amendment No. 205 suggests two obvious ways, which have been widely canvassed, to deal with the fact that long trials can be inconvenient to juries.
The experience of those who try long trials, especially complex fraud cases, and of the Serious Fraud Office, which manages most cases of that sort, is generally successful. It may surprise the public to hear that there is an 86 per cent. conviction rate. The problem is not public understanding but the practical problem of whether it is convenient to have to be in court week after week in a case that may go on for 18 months. I understand that the Government were motivated to make the change not because of the inability of juries to cope with long cases intellectually or for other reasons, but because of the practicality of dealing with such long cases. The amendments therefore seek to address the practical question of how to maintain the jury principle in a way that does not make jury service too difficult.
The first suggestion in amendment No. 205 is that instead of having a trial without a jury, the judge could order that the case be
heard by a smaller jury of eight jurors, and that those jurors would have to indicate their willingness to serve on a potentially long case. The second suggestion is that two special advisers could be appointed to help the jury to understand financial or commercial matters.
I am keen to promote the representative nature of the jury. It would not necessarily lead to a less representative jury if we had to establish whether potential jurors were able to hear a long case. For instance, the fact that people may be retired does not necessarily mean that they are elderly: they may have retired at a relatively young age. Those who are not working may be unable to do full-time or even part-time work because of illness or disability, but they may be willing to serve. On the other hand, it may be inconvenient for some people to serve on a jury in a long case for family, personal or career reasons.
The Government are keen that there should be far fewer exemptions from jury service. They want everyone to be included—for instance, GPs should not be able to get off jury service as they have in the past. We need a combination of factors. First, we need to ensure flexibility for those called to jury service—they should be able to say, ''I cannot do it now, but could manage it from next June onwards,'' or, ''I am in difficulty between now and Easter, but not afterwards.'' Secondly, if the risk is that 12 people could not easily be found who could serve for a year, we need to be able to ask potential jurors if they could serve for that long. In either case, we would still ensure a representative jury.
The other objection to jury trial is that cases might be too complex—to be honest, many people find book-keeping complex. If so, we need other people to help the jury. We cannot ask the judge, who may not be an expert, and we cannot ask the lawyers, who may occasionally have an interest in confusing matters. We need someone—perhaps an accountant or a book-keeper—to be able to tell the jury what a balance sheet means and, as an independent adviser, give an interpretation of the figures. That is one way of dealing with the concern over complexity.