New Clause 1
Fraud Bill [Lords]
9:00 am
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General & Shadow Spokesman On Community Cohesion, Law Officers (Assist the Home Affairs Team); Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for bringing the new clause forward. He will know that his views on the subject are identical to mine and my party’s. We sought to resist section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 when it was introduced. There was a stand-off between the Lords and the Commons and its eventual introduction was accompanied by a double-lock mechanism that required a resolution of both Houses of Parliament—which, it became apparent, the Government were unable to secure.
I make the position quite clear: I do not think that the Government, in seeking to put that provision in the Criminal Justice Act, were attempting a ruthless undermining of trial by jury. However, I happen to believe that they were profoundly mistaken. Jury trial is a very good system, and I believe that it is possible to have jury trial in long and complex fraud cases. Indeed, from the few fraud cases that I have done, my experience is that the jury appear to have absolutely no difficulty understanding the key elements of the offence or the allegations being made. As I mentioned earlier in our proceedings, the basic problem that emerged in virtually every case in which I was involved was that the case had been badly presented and the indictment poorly drafted. Those cases tended to fail, quite often at half-time after a submission of no case to answer. Sometimes—as with the case in which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox) was involved—cases ran into the sands because the case management was extremely unsatisfactory. That has nothing whatever to do with the jury.
If the Government wish to return to the topic in future, they would be well advised, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said, to allow for a little delay to see how the new Fraud Act works. I have some confidence—clearly, so, too does the Solicitor-General, as he is presenting the Bill to the House—that this Fraud Bill has the potential to make the prosecution of fraud easier. Certainly, in terms of the problem of comprehensibility to a jury, this Bill, as it stands, can only be an improvement. I hope that the Government do not, as a result, run off and hastily introduce new primary legislation—that is what they say they want to do—to implement section 43 in some new or variant form. Of course, if they do that, we will listen carefully to their proposals, and if they have any merit, we will give them careful consideration.
In the course of the passage of this Bill through the other place, I was pleased to learn that the Government were prepared to give an assurance that section 43 would never be used to implement restrictions on trial by jury in long fraud cases. However, the suggestion that there might even be primary legislation in the next Session of Parliament clearly raises the possibility of yet another serious difference of view occurring in this House and, I suspect, the other place on the subject. I make this plea to the Solicitor-General: if the Government’s intention is to proceed in the next Session, perhaps they should delay it a year and just see how the new fraud provisions work. It might be possible to provide enough reassurance to the Solicitor-General—and, I dare say, the Attorney-General, who seems particularly exercised about the issue—that a change to the right to jury trial is not needed.
Although I welcome the spirit of the new clause, I certainly shall not press it to the vote; that would appear churlish, in view of the assurances given by the Government in the other place. However, I am grateful for the opportunity that this Committee has had to touch on the subject, as now the Government know where we stand on it. Perhaps we can also have a short response from the Solicitor-General, telling us how the Government’s thinking on the subject is developing.