‘We now have a battle over jury trial - an equally important component of our liberties’.
Lord Kingsland (the shadow Lord Chancellor of the Conservative Party) on 20 March 2007 on the second reading in the House of Lords of the Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill.[169]
FOR 30 YEARS the administrators of the mode of criminal trial for serious fraudsters aimed, in vain, at introducing a modification in criminal justice, supported throughout by the Labour Administration and opposed mainly by the proponents of the existing system of trial by jury as the thin end of the wedge in a culturally entrenched system of justice.
The aim has been concluded by a single section in the Protection of Freedom Act 2012 - section 113. Section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, notorious for its inclusion of the ill-fated IPPs (imprisonment for public protection) provided (subject to an affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament) for applications by the prosecution on indictment for certain fraud trials to be conducted without a jury. The 2012 Act has simply removed it from the statute book. Thus ended the protracted parliamentary episode and - seemingly for the foreseeable future - any public debate over non-jury trial for serious fraud cases. Why, and how the crusade for a modest reform to jury trial for the more serious offences was sustainably opposed is a lamentable tale of action by interested pressure groups and modern representative democracy. But, first, the historical version of the affair in democratic rule of government.
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