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Hilary Benn: It is not a consideration at all. Mr. Grieve: I am grateful to hear from the Minister that it is not a consideration at all. We have heard nothing about speeding the administration of justice, so that is not a consideration. So we have a strange, hybrid right that will appeal to those who feel that the offences that they have committed, or have been found to have committed, are such that they want to speed their rehabilitation with right-thinking people as quickly as possible by arguing that it was a judge, and no one else, who found them guilty. It will also be favoured by those who wish to appeal, or believe that they can, to the views or prejudices of the judge, as the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) pointed out. People know about judges' views and prejudices, and they are likely to try to exploit them for their own benefit. Column Number: 288 Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman says that we have heard nothing about speed of process. In his experience, do people sometimes opt for a magistrates court trial, contrary to legal advice, because they will get a speedier trial there and they want to get through the process faster than they would by going through the rigmarole of a Crown court trial? A defendant who opts for the process might think that he will have a quicker trial, so we have heard about the speed of trial process; it is one thing that a defendant might want to take into account. Mr. Grieve: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The situation varies from time to time, but it is normally easier to get a magistrates court trial, especially for a short matter—something that would take half a day to a day—in front of a stipendiary magistrate, than to go to the Crown court, so that might be a consideration. However, once someone has decided to go to the Crown court, or been sent there, there is no reason to suppose that the pre-trial procedure will be any different in length whether he is being tried by a judge alone or by judge and jury. The only issue is whether the trial might be faster in front of a judge alone, and I accept that there might be marginal time savings in that respect. The point is that consideration is not, apparently, what motivated the Government to offer the right. What appears to have motivated them is the view that either system is, from their point of view of supervising the administration of justice, equally satisfactory. That does not persuade me—the exceptions that are placed within that right have most affected my opinion on that matter. For those reasons, I am unable to offer my support. I cannot see the benefits, although I can see an endless series of downsides that result from moving the jury out of the picture for serious offences, in terms of the quality and fairness of justice. I also think that there will be endless public and press comment about the decisions that judges take in deciding whether the rights should be granted or withheld. For every case in which, as the Minister says, the public will be reassured because the right will be withheld, there are bound to be cases in which the judge decides, if he is acting fairly, that the rights should be granted. There will then be copy in all the tabloid newspapers that reads, ''So-and-so has chosen trial by judge alone. Despite representations by the prosecutor to the contrary, judge so-and-so was quite happy to allow this to happen. This is a serious case. It involves child molestation''—or something else very unpleasant—''and concerns a notable personality, but may not be in the gravest catalogue of offences.'' The entire system of justice will be brought into disrepute in the process. I appreciate the motives behind the clause. However, I tell the Minister that I am wholly unconvinced, and that I shall vote against it. John Mann (Bassetlaw): I have two reservations on the principle of the clause. I consider every clause in the Bill by asking what it does for my constituents who are hassled by criminal elements or blighted by theft, and I think that the principle of common sense is quite appropriate. I am still waiting to hear what the clause will do for those people. Column Number: 289 My first reservation is that I know of a number of cases—from experience and from reading elsewhere—of attempts by people to use their membership of the freemasons to influence events in court. By dint of its being a secret society, the only attempts that would come to light would be unsuccessful ones. Some commentators who have looked at the issue would suggest that freemasonry has an undue influence in the legal profession. Incidents have been relayed to me directly whereby people have gone to court and indicated clearly their membership of a lodge, in order, one assumes, to influence someone. I am aware of those incidents because the attempts were rebuffed. However, if people feel that they can go to court and do such things, either they are highly misguided or there may on occasion be some truth to the claims that I have mentioned. My second reservation is about an issue that the Minister knows well—he and I have discussed it on a number of occasions—which is the trial of the Leeds United footballers. The club is situated in his constituency. The jury found a Mr. Lee Bowyer not guilty, but I am delighted that Mr. Ridsdale, the chairman of the club, both fined Mr. Bowyer at the time and has now released him, recapturing the legal costs in so doing. I think that those acts were quite appropriate. Mr. Bowyer was found not guilty, so clearly he is not guilty. If he had elected, before a white judge, trial without jury in front of another white judge, and was found not guilty, so that the cause of justice was served in exactly the same way, there would still have been a problem with justice being seen to be done. In questions relating to race—an allegation that underpinned that trial very publicly, both in the city of Leeds and nationally—justice being seen to be done is in some ways as important as justice being done. In such a case, justice is more likely to be seen to be done in a trial by jury, with 12 good people and true from a range of backgrounds, than if a white man goes to a white judge and asks for a trial under another white judge who would reach the same conclusions. That important dynamic needs to be considered. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is aware of the case, as well as its implications. Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. The Bowyer-Woodgate case was a high-profile case and clearly one in which issues of race and racial attack were central. The reality is that, in most urban areas in England—and certainly in big trials in Cardiff, and to a lesser extent Newport and Swansea—a jury will include at least some members of minority communities. By definition, a jury is a more representative decision-making body than a single judge, because we can hardly claim to have a representative judiciary in terms of either gender or ethnic background, even on the basis of simplistic quotas. It is really important that juries are seen to be representative. However good a job judges do, they are not yet in that category, because if one person from one background, a woman or a man, judges a trial, that provides an additional reason for thinking that justice has not been done. Column Number: 290 Ian Lucas: I want to pick up the valid point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). Does the hon. Gentleman agree that subsection (8), which covers the situation when
would certainly apply in a case such as the Bowyer-Woodgate case? No doubt, guidelines will be put in place in due course to make that clear. Simon Hughes: The answer is, who knows? We cannot know that that will be the case because the Minister said that it had not been thought necessary to explain the provision and there has been no discussion of guidelines to be approved by Parliament. Guidelines might be issued by the Lord Chief Justice, although they sometimes run into difficulty, as we saw recently. I would far rather trust the more representative jury of 12, and I shall set out the reasons why I share with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield and others the view that we would be unwise to go down the road proposed by the Government.
11 amMr. Stinchcombe: Do not trials such as the Bowyer-Woodgate trial make it clear that there should be exceptions to the right to demand a trial by judge alone? Does not that mean that the issue of principle now is whether we should give the accused that right to seek trial by judge alone? As a Liberal, does the hon. Gentleman believe that the accused should have that right? Simon Hughes: I do not think that being a Liberal affects the decision terribly. Mr. Stinchcombe: The right to choose. Simon Hughes: I shall come back to that. On the earlier issue, the difficulty is that people would be even more critical of judges if they said no to an application by a white defendant and yes to one by a black defendant. I can see all sorts of reasons why judges would run into difficulty personally; and they would pilloried as a judge who favoured the black or the Asian community. I shall argue my case, but I think that we are going down a dangerous road. Mr. Grieve: Is not the other point that it is also grossly unfair to Mr. Bowyer? Why, because he is a celeb, should he be forced to go through trial by jury even though he wants a trial by judge alone, when for an identical offence committed in the same location, two unknowns would be able get trial by judge alone without any difficulty? Simon Hughes: Exactly. The more one looks at the argument, the more difficulties arise. I am absolutely clear that the choice would be made only if we went down the road hinted at by the hon. and learned Lady, and it would be made only at the last minute. As for the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North, it is not a matter of looking after the client—like everyone else, the defendant is a member of the community, and the advocate for the defendant will give them the best advice. We cannot take away the right to make the choice, but it often cannot be made until the very last Column Number: 291 minute. It would be quite wrong and open to all sorts of argument to do otherwise; it would involve further hearings and would raise human rights issues concerning whether the choice could be exercised only by a certain time or a certain date and in a certain way.The reality is hugely affected by who the judge will be, just as people's decision on whether to plead guilty or whether to appear in the higher or lower court depends on who the magistrate or district judge is. Those real factors come into play every day of the week, and people in Tower Bridge magistrates court decide whether to be tried there or somewhere else depending on their view of the person who regularly sits there as magistrate.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 14 January 2003 |
