Sir Edward Leigh

Quite unusually, I have served as a practising barrister in courts and have also served on juries. I never fail to be impressed by the extraordinary care that juries take in deciding a case. Undoubtedly, the stand-out speech of the debate so far has been by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox). He addressed us like a jury; it was actually rather wonderful. He posed a question to us that is always posed to a jury, and which is emphasised by the judge at the end of the case: are you certain? Are we sure that trial by jury is guilty? Frankly, I do not think that the Government have made the case so strongly that we can be certain of the outcome. We are debating something of deep and fundamental seriousness. No one doubts that the backlog in the criminal courts is serious. Everybody agrees—I follow the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) in saying this—that justice delayed is justice denied for victims, whom we would certainly always put first, and for defendants alike. We know that Parliament has a duty to act. The question before us, however, is not whether we solve the backlog, but how we solve it. The concern many of us have is that we may be tempted to treat trial by jury as just some procedural device that can be adjusted for administrative convenience. Leaving aside the fact that there was no mention of this measure in any manifesto, trial by jury is not merely a procedure of the courts; it is one of the constitutional foundations of our liberty. As William Blackstone wrote in the 18th century, “Trial by jury ever has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law”. It would have been inconceivable to Blackstone that what he called the “grand bulwark” of an Englishman’s liberties might be voluntarily and needlessly surrendered.