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Mr. David Cameron (Witney): This is the third time that the Government have attempted to change the jury system. Will the Home Secretary pledge to leave it alone for the rest of the Parliament?
Mr. Blunkett: I have given all the pledges that I am going to give tonight, including a pledge not to leave alone, on clause 42, the question of how we will deal with the jury system. I thought that I had indicated that we are prepared to look positively at the proposals to be brought forward, so I had better not give a commitment that reverses the pledge that I have just given in case I am accused of duplicity. Many Members of the House would disagree with what I say, but my honour remains intact, and I have every intention that it should.
I invite the House to return the Bill to the Lords with the changes that we have proposed; I invite the House of Lords to hold to the agreement that we have reached tonight; and I invite the British public to rejoice, along with those of us who are somewhat exhausted by what has been going on in recent days. I thank the Officers of the House and those who have worked this evening, over the two hours since agreement was reached, to put together the papers. We appreciate what they have done in recent days and in difficult circumstances. I thank,
too, Members of the House for their tolerance and forbearance—even the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), whose interventions on Tuesday rightly earned me a rebuttal and a slap on the knuckles from the sketchwriter in The Times for being my usual, irritable self.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield): I join the Home Secretary in extending our condolences to the family of the consul general and the other members of staff killed in Istanbul in an absolute outrage. All Members of the House will unite with the Home Secretary in extending our thoughts to the Turkish Government and all who have had relatives killed or injured in the incident.
This is, thank goodness, the end of a long process in which it has been a privilege to participate, although I have to say to the Home Secretary that there were one or two occasions in the last 72 hours when I began to think that it had an endless quality to it. There is, of course, much that is good in the Criminal Justice Bill. I remember so well the Home Secretary, in introducing the measure, indicating that what he really wanted was a measure that would stand the test of time and be accepted irrespective of which party was in government. I say to him that it was in that spirit that we participated with the Government and other parties in trying to achieve a workable Bill.
It should come as no surprise that at the end of that process there were outstanding issues that caused serious difficulty, and for the most part I welcome the way in which the Government approached the process of debate and discussion that enabled those matters to be whittled down. That said, I cannot escape the fact, which is perhaps inevitable in these matters, that as one gets closer to the end, so the Moloch of the Government's grinding-down machine starts to come into operation. It is greatly to the credit of my friends in the other place, Lord Kingsland, Lady Anelay and Lord Hunt, that they and others resisted that pressure consistently so that we could arrive at the end at an outcome that protects the principles of jury trial. I very much regret that the Government, perhaps not in the person of the Home Secretary but certainly in the person of the resident of No. 10 Downing street, seemed to be so hellbent on cavalierly undermining those principles.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): Does my hon. Friend note that the advantageous alterations about which we heard this evening have arisen because of the detailed discussion of the Bill, clause by clause? Does he agree that the rest of our legislation would be much better served if the same careful consideration were given in this House and the House of Lords, instead of constantly being excluded by guillotined Bills?
Mr. Grieve: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. On this Bill, the Government Whip went to great trouble, despite the mischief of the guillotine, to make available adequate time for scrutiny. Inevitably, when we came to the final stages of the Bill, all of that tended to go out of the window. It is only because those in another place can do the job of scrutiny at leisure that we were protected from implementing legislation that would have been extremely harmful.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): I do not want to be unduly critical because I have already been critical of the Home Secretary, which obviously caused him some upset. Perhaps my hon. Friend misspoke. The House of Lords dealt with the Bill not at leisure, but thoroughly.
Mr. Grieve: The other place has the leisure to deal with legislation thoroughly. The problem in this place is that we are constantly hurried, to the point that amendments were being so rushed today that they appeared in the wrong place on Order Papers and nobody knew whether they had been passed in another place. We should reflect on that.
As the House knows, matters have centred on trial by jury. I am delighted that clause 41, with its dreadful option of giving a defendant an opportunity to apply for trial to be conducted without a jury, so undermining the essence of the jury trial system, has at long last been abandoned by the Government. The credit for that goes to those in all parts of the House who finally persuaded the Home Secretary of the error of his ways. I pay particular tribute to the hon. and learned Members for Redcar (Vera Baird) and for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), who argued the point so forcefully.
On clause 42, which deals with fraud trial, there has been a bit of an argument, which has gone on a long time. It was the final argument in respect of the Bill. I do not wish to revisit that. I should prefer to go home and remember in my dreams the sotto voce imprecations that I remember hearing from the Home Secretary during the debate earlier this week, some of which were directed at me and some at my hon. Friends and other hon. Members. That will be a good memory.
The Government have had to climb down totally on clause 42, and have come up with a face-saving formula to mask what they had to do. I thank the Home Secretary for applying sufficient pressure on the Prime Minister to allow him to do that, as I am strongly of the view that that is where the mischief came from that prevented us from resolving the issue days ago.
With regard to the double lock mechanism, which means that the measure can never be implemented without an affirmative resolution of both Houses, I have two comments to make to the Home Secretary. I know from my colleagues in another place that they will shortly make it clear that they will not be bound by any constitutional convention whatsoever in respect of the statutory instrument mechanism. In addition, under no circumstances will they allow the measure to pass through the other place unless or until it is part of a total package of reform that is acceptable to this House in exactly the same way as any primary legislation.
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I also say sincerely to the Home Secretary that we accept that this may be an area that requires detailed scrutiny and examination, and we undertake, if he comes up with proposals, to work with him to examine any representations made by the Serious Fraud Office that justify any departure from current practice. The Home Secretary will be aware that, in Committee and on Report, it was the Opposition who tabled proposals that might allow for specialist juries in such cases. However, one thing is clear. We shall resolutely uphold the principle of jury trial. I said previously and I say it
again: I do not wish to live in a country where jury trial is denied to those charged with serious crime, and I will work night and day to prevent that from happening if the Government ever do it again.I hope very much that in any further examination of these issues the Government will adopt a slightly different approach on consultation from what we had in the Bill. It was unfortunate that the proposals crept in as they did.
We have had to consider other areas, and here I can say much kinder things to the Home Secretary. I want to thank him for the way in which he has approached the whole issue of jury tampering. He knew at the outset that we supported the principle that it was essential that it should be possible to do justice where juries were being tampered with, and I hope very much that we have come to a final conclusion on that which, while there are areas about which I have reservations and anxieties, will prove workable and fair. I thank him and his colleagues in the Home Office for the way in which they have approached that matter, because I always felt that we were able to have a completely constructive dialogue on it. I particularly thank the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins). He has behaved impeccably during the Bill's passage and I have particularly enjoyed negotiating with him.
In respect of the other outstanding matter, which was bad character, we were broadly supportive of what the Government were trying to achieve. I am left with a note of regret that I still do not think that it is as good as it should be. I am constantly reassured by the view of the hon. and learned Member for Medway that it will not make a blind bit of difference because the measure is pretty unworkable and the judiciary will have to sort it out. I am not sure that that is a good way to legislate, but we have a better outcome than I feared at the outset.
May I ask the Home Secretary two specific questions? He knows that the main mischief in this proposal was clause 96, and I should like him to confirm to the House that, despite the inclusionary presumption, it will be for the prosecution to establish that propensity evidence is relevant to the issue in any case. I believe that Baroness Scotland previously did that, but I should like to hear from the Home Secretary that that is indeed what will happen. Secondly, I should like to hear from him a confirmation that the prosecution will be required to give notice that, through any line of questioning to the defendant, they intend to raise an issue under section 96(1)(b).
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