Sir Edward Leigh

That is a very fair point. I ask Members to look to their conscience. If they, a Member of Parliament—a person of good character—were accused of shoplifting, what would they choose? They would choose trial by jury, would they not? They would not choose to be tried by a magistrate. The task before us is to solve this practical problem without undermining our constitutional safeguards. The danger that we face is the temptation to sacrifice a long-standing liberty for the sake of short-term administrative convenience. The Lord Chancellor is a friend of mine and a good man. He is not a villain; he approaches things with the best of intentions—I say that without doubt. The problem is that we may not always have individuals as good natured and well intentioned as him. We accept that he is genuinely trying to solve a problem, but I fear that he is doing it with the wrong mindset. Constitutional safeguards are not designed for moments when power is exercised by good men; they exist precisely because future holders of power may not always be so wise or so restrained. We have become so used to our state of freedom that we are in danger of imagining that it is the natural state of mankind. History teaches us that it is not. We have reached our advanced state of structured freedom, responsible government and parliamentary democracy through centuries of slow, organic growth. They grew through the common law, through Magna Carta, through Parliament and through the principle that the community—the people—participate in justice.