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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I think that it would have been equally necessary. The burden of all the evidence is that what we need to change is the process and the procedure—the organisation, management and investigation of cases of serious fraud, not the way in which they are tried. All the evidence leads me to that conclusion, and I hope that it would lead the hon. Gentleman to the same conclusion. He will know that there have been several reassessments of the evidence. In sequence, the first was the protocol, issued in March 2005 and referred to a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford). Secondly, a Bar Council report at the beginning of this year looked into the problem again, and was robust in its clear view that other matters were more important than changing from jury trial to judge-only trial. Thirdly, the Solicitor-General made a statement to the House—originally given by the Attorney-General in the other place—in July this year, after the Jubilee line case acquittal, announcing various proposals that amounted to the lessons learned from it. We have thus had three initiatives—two formal initiatives connected with improving the procedure, and new criminal procedure rules. We also await a final announcement of the Government’s recommendations arising out of the cross-governmental review. One proposal is to have a financial court, which could consolidate good practice and employ practitioners suitable to the task. The Government have already conceded that High Court judges are the most appropriate for these cases, and there are strong arguments for using judges with sufficiently high qualifications to deal with them. All the movement has been in the direction of improving procedures and no one has argued—although implicit suggestions may have been made to that effect—that changing the basis of trial from jury to judge would increase the rate of convictions. If that argument is going to be used, it risks becoming an argument that juries are not suitable to judge guilt or innocence generally. As was said about health and safety cases, and as applies in many other cases, there is no evidence that the issues of honesty or dishonesty are more difficult for juries to understand in fraud cases than in modern cases involving computer and other IT evidence.