Contribution
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet). Although she is on the opposite side of the debate from me, she always speaks with huge passion on these issues. I should start with a couple of declarations. First, my wife is a sitting employment judge, and therefore the tribunal element of the Bill pertains to her. Secondly, like many right hon. and hon. Members in this Chamber, I was a barrister immediately prior to coming into this place, and I maintain my practising certificate. I hope the hon. Lady will indulge me if I pontificate on this issue for a few moments.
While I was not a criminal barrister, I did a significant amount of inquest work, so I had face-to-face, first-hand experience with jurors, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they are the most remarkable, ordinary people, who give up their time for civic engagement. They sit there quietly, listening to the evidence; they take their role seriously; and they sit in judgment and make findings of fact. That is a huge constitutional principle. We have talked about rights, and I am not going to pretend that there is an innate right to a trial by jury, but there is a firm constitutional principle of ensuring that justice is not merely done to the public, but that it is done with the public.
We all know about the problem of court backlogs. It would be a farce to pretend that this is not a significant and serious issue—it is a failure of the state that we have got to this place. It is a failure of successive Governments, and we recognise that across the board, but the question we have to ask ourselves is not whether trial by jury should be abandoned; it is whether the reforms that are before this House, with the scrutiny that has been undertaken and the impact assessment that accompanies the Bill, constitute sufficient evidence for making such a reform to this country’s constitution.
What the Bill asks for is very clear, and we have to be honest about it. We are asking for a shift in the balance between the state and its people, and that may lead to inequality before the law. Take the prime example raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox): that of two individuals who, on a factual matrix, committed precisely the same crime. Those individuals appear before the court, but one has a string of previous convictions. Are we really saying that a person should be denied the opportunity of a jury trial if they have not previously been of bad character? That is a nonsense, and it does not achieve what we should be seeking to achieve.
The further point, of course, is that if we are making such a constitutional change on the basis that it will enable us to deal with the backlog in the criminal courts, why is there no sunset clause in the Bill? Why are we not saying that the purpose of the Bill is to shift the dial and make progress, but that we recognise that it should not be a blank cheque for the state? We should recognise that if this change has to be made—although I do not believe it does—it should be made on a limited basis, because if we are to change a right that is older than most institutions in this country, the least Parliament should do is base its decision on more than just an assumption in the impact assessment.
Let me turn to the modelling, which was also raised by the shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy). In this House on 3 February, I asked the Lord Chancellor a question about the 20% reduction in the time taken by court hearings. He gave me a very clear answer—that he accepted Sir Brian Leveson’s findings, but that the Government would publish their own modelling alongside the Bill. However, page 10 of the impact assessment is very clear that the Government have adopted Sir Brian’s assumption. That is an assumption; it is not modelling. There is a distinct difference. Analysis is helpful, but modelling is critical, and if we are weighing up the evidence base for the Bill, we have to have more than analysis alone.