Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I too welcome the Statement. I congratulate the Government on having the courage to confront a really difficult issue. The status quo is quite unacceptable. I would rather hope that this House and Parliament in general could treat this on a non-party-political basis. There are a lot of reasons why there were delays; some of them were due to Covid, which is a non-party-political issue. But I have long thought that fraud trials, for example, are very often wholly unsuitable for juries. I am glad that the Government acknowledge that. As to the question of judges and reasons, I have just two questions I would like to ask the Minister. I would have thought that judges, when they do determine these things, might well give reasons. That would be consistent with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. There would be a considerable advantage to potential appellants, because they would know the reasons why they had been convicted; whereas at the moment, with jury verdicts, you have the board verdict of guilty or not guilty. You do not know whether they have taken into consideration relevant consideration or irrelevant considerations. My other question is this. The Statement reads: “Our world-leading judges should hear the most serious cases”. Standing back, does it occur to the House and, indeed, to the Minister that it is slightly odd that the 90% or so of the trivial offences are tried by those with professional experience, and yet we give the most serious cases to 12 conscientious but random people taken off the street?