Fraud Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has said some constructive things. He introduces an important aspect, to which I am sure the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General will give thought. The key to the solution to the problem of jury trials lies not in the jury but in the prosecution and the judge and in taking and keeping a firm grip on the case from start to finish. We have had many debates on the jury system. The key points in favour of the jury are its independence, the care with which it considers such cases and the confidence that it carries with the public.  It is perfectly clear—it could hardly be clearer than from the Jubilee Line case, which seems to have set this particular hare running—that the problem when major and complex cases collapse, as, from time to time, they do, lies not with the jury but with the judge or the prosecutor. I grew up, in parliamentary terms, with the development of the Serious Fraud Office. I remember vividly the days when long and complex frauds were tried, even before the era of the fraud investigation groups which, for the first time, brought police, accountants and prosecutors—barristers—to work closely together. In the end, that was taken forward—very successfully, in my view—by the Serious Fraud Office. It is that fraud investigation group approach—that combination of professions—that is of the essence in successful prosecution of fraud. It was highly controversial from time to time during the late 1980s and early 1990s. There were one or two collapses and the unfortunate Serious Fraud Office was sometimes called the ““serious farce office””. That was mostly extremely unfair. It highlighted the fact that the kind of people whom you must prosecute are often very powerful people in their own right. They have made a great deal of money, often dishonestly, and they spend it fighting the case—as they are perfectly entitled to do—both in court and through the newspapers. I invite the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General to backtrack. If we actually analyse how serious fraud cases have been tried during the past 15 years, we find that the great majority have been effectively tried. Juries are in no sense reluctant to convict in cases of serious fraud. In fact, conviction levels—if one pays attention to them—are actually higher than in the ordinary run of criminal cases. The main theme of my speech is that, when a case has gone wrong, it is nearly always, in fact I think always, the fault either of the prosecution—I say that kindly, because these are difficult cases to prosecute—or of the judge, or both. I saw a slight wrinkle on the brow of the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General when I mentioned the Jubilee Line case, but I think that we are still waiting for the report—at least, the Library cannot find it—