Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

Because, with the respect to the hon. Lady, those matters must be more carefully thought through and not just dealt with by trial and error. Lord Carlile acknowledges that the existing system offers a ““high standard of justice””. Simply to work on the basis of ““Perhaps it might be better”” is not an entirely good way to proceed with criminal justice in Northern Ireland. In his 2003 report, Lord Carlile also acknowledged that there would be resource and training implications if the three-judge approach were adopted. He estimated that 10 additional judges would be required. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire raised questions about the parallel system that we are introducing for on-the-runs, but I suppose that I should say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I will not crave your indulgence by talking about that measure in the context of this Bill. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that 10 additional judges would cost several million pounds to maintain—the Court Service has produced that cost for us. If proceeding down that route were to produce a better system of criminal justice, of course we should consider it. However, until we know the full costings and are certain that that system of justice would be better, it would be foolish to throw out something at that even Lord Carlile accepts has a high standard of justice. The recruitment and training of the judges would lead to significant financial costs, as would their accommodation and, quite rightly, their security. I am not clear that the proposal represents value for money, especially given that Diplock courts in their current form are due to be repealed under the security normalisation programme in about 18 months, subject to—critically—an enabling environment. Three-judge courts could create significant problems of delay. The requirement to ensure that the three allocated judges were available for all stages of a trial might lead to delay in the criminal justice system. Unless verdicts were required to be unanimous, which would be different from the current practice in the Court of Appeal, there could be unwelcome and unhelpful speculation about the verdicts and individual views of judges involved in such cases. It is not clear to me that that would increase confidence in the system.