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Mr. Letwin: I am spoilt for choice. I give way to the hon. Gentleman first.
Ian Lucas: Is the right hon. Gentleman not ignoring the fact that the vast majority of minor cases—if I may so describe them—are dealt with in the magistrates courts, without a jury, and that that will continue to be the case? The vast majority of criminal cases dealt with in our courts will therefore continue to be heard without a jury.
Mr. Letwin: That is precisely my point. There will be a bizarre situation in which a large number of very minor cases will be dealt with increasingly by district judges, and a large number of very major cases will be dealt with by judges in the superior courts. Sandwiched between the two will be cases that are rather more major than the most minor, but rather more minor than the most major. They will be dealt with by juries. The Government will tell the House, "This is nonsense. We can do without the juries in the middle section." I know that that will be true—if the Government think about it, they will know that it is likely to be true—but I hope to prevent us collectively ever from finding out whether it will be true, because it is too dangerous to contemplate.
Mr. Blunkett: If we are going to argue the case rationally, as the right hon. Gentleman has been doing, we should not go into a kind of never-never land. We are dealing with a very specific group of cases—fewer than 100 a year—so we should not make presumptions that we did not make before, when 95 per cent. of cases were dealt with in the magistrates courts, higher courts dealt
with cases on appeal without a jury, and the remainder were dealt with by jury trial. The removal of a few dozen cases does not materially change that position one iota.
Mr. Letwin: I had intended to deal slightly later with the Home Secretary's repeated claim relating to fewer than 100 cases, but I shall deal with it now in response to his intervention. If I may say so, I think that that figure is accurate and phoney. It is accurate because it is a reflection of the number of cases in which there was jury tampering or that involved fraud trials. My argument is that the Bill—the provisions in print are what will govern this matter, not what is in the Home Secretary's fondest imagination—allows for a far wider application of the principle than that restricted number of cases.
Mr. Hogg: Would my right hon. Friend allow me to reinforce his point by drawing to his attention the fact that, if we look carefully at clause 37—which I know that he has—we see that the grounds for securing a non-jury trial are the complexity or length of the trial? It is perfectly true that the Bill then attributes a cause for that complexity or length, but once we accept that complexity or length per se are grounds for a non-jury trial, why have the additional requirement? The Government will in due course ask the House to dispense with that additional requirement.
Mr. Letwin: That is another point relating to the slippery slope, and I can only gently complain that it was the next point that I was going to make. My right hon. and learned Friend is right. I will not labour this point further. There are three or four other grounds for supposing that this is a slippery slope. The point here is clear: jury trial matters. It matters because of the structure of justice in its relationship to the citizen, and this is the beginning of a slippery slope away from it. Perhaps it is more than the beginning.
The next stage of my argument is also simple and clear. We have to ask whether any great gains will result from this great step. If the proposals were to result in great gains in the cause of justice—[Interruption.]—and if, as the Home Secretary suggests from a sedentary position, large numbers of criminals who would not otherwise be convicted were to be put behind bars because of these changes, without any significant risk of the innocent being convicted, I can see that there would be an opposing argument.
But the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), who reminded me that there is a very high conviction rate in the relevant sorts of trial, is right. The 92 per cent. conviction rate that has been adduced in relation to cases involving the Serious Fraud Office is also right. The evidence from jury-tampered trials is that, on the whole, people have been good at picking the problem up and defending those who are on the juries, and that the conviction rates that attend subsequently are high. I know of no serious empirical base for supposing that moving so far down such a slippery slope is justified by any great and immediate gain. There will perhaps be some gain, but it will not be so great as to be proportional.
David Winnick: I am not sure whether it will give the right hon. Gentleman any satisfaction to learn that I might vote with the Government tonight. I was on the
Home Affairs Committee, we made our recommendation and I went along with it. But if I do, I shall simply be giving them the benefit of the doubt. The doubt remains, however, and the more I listen, particularly to the fine argument being advanced by the right hon. Gentleman—after all, if an Opposition spokesperson is making a good argument, why not say so?—the more that doubt reasserts itself in my mind.
Mr. Letwin: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who might be the sole example of anyone ever being persuaded by an argument of mine in the House of Commons.
Lady Hermon: I have to admit to the right hon. Gentleman that I am not persuaded by his arguments this evening. I would be more sympathetic to his point of view if, in the light of the fact that his party supports the Belfast agreement, which we have had for five years, and that the IRA has been on ceasefire for the six years since 1997, he could assure me that it was now Conservative party policy to campaign for the restoration of jury trials throughout the United Kingdom, of which Northern Ireland is a vital part.
Mr. Letwin: Much as I should like, for all sorts of reasons, to buy the good will of the hon. Lady, I am astonishingly clear that, mercifully, my remit extends to England and Wales—not that I have any actual remit; that lies with the Home Secretary, but even my shadow remit covers only England and Wales. I ask the hon. Lady to contact my esteemed colleague, the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who will have his own views on that difficult matter.
Lady Hermon: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. I find myself offended. He began his remarks by saying that the jury was a critical part of our liberal democracy and that if we removed it, we would have removed one of our democracy's foundation stones. I do not accept that he can simply shift the burden to the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies). The shadow Home Secretary must address the question this evening. As someone who gave an interview to The Independent in which he stated that jury trial was the bulwark of 800 years of our democracy, he cannot allow part of the United Kingdom not to have that pleasure.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must ensure that the debate remains within certain bounds.
Mr. Letwin: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have never been more grateful to you.
The final stage of my argument is also clear and simple. The House must obviously take the Government's proposals seriously, and we must therefore ask whether there are any balancing arguments. Are the Government pointing out things to which we need to pay attention? I have already
explained why I do not believe that the Government are justified in making any change on the basis of the purported gains from the proposals—I stress this for the benefit of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), among others—and that is why we shall press to a vote amendments Nos. 2 and 3, if you will allow us to do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and why that is our first preference.We have tried to identify the evil that the Government believe exists. We have also tried to produce constructive alternatives to deal with that evil, or, indeed, those two evils. We have done that in the spirit of compromise, and I want to explain to the Home Secretary quite personally the reason why. We will not compromise on the general principle. I shall ask my noble Friends in the other place to fight to the last breath on these matters, and if that means cratering the Bill, I am prepared to see it cratered.
Because I am taking that position, I have sought every means at my disposal to ensure that there is an escape route, so that much that is good in the Bill can get through without a confrontation between the two Houses. That is why my hon. Friends and I tabled new clauses 1 and 2, incurring the odium of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, whose purity of mind I admire. That is also why we suggested the possibility of an empanelled, expert jury, and why we tabled amendment No. 13, which provides for the abandoning of a jury when there has actually been jury tampering. We did those things in the spirit of seeking a compromise solution that could avoid the Bill falling and which would preserve, in each case, the existence of the jury—I admit that, in the first, it would be an unsatisfactory jury—and point up the attachment of the House and of Parliament as a whole to the principle of jury trial, thereby preventing the descent of the slippery slope.
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