Fraud Bill [Lords]

I concur, and, as one of the rare breed of council tax payers in the City of London, I am glad that it is not solely my contribution that enables them to do their job on behalf of the wider community. I have thought for a long time that we need a single, all-embracing anti-fraud organisation, with much better internal connections, to provide better investigations in parts of the country that are not currently well served. I hope that that will form part of the conclusions of the review that the Solicitor-General mentioned. Even when we have successful investigations, we still have problems with the management of fraud cases. The over-simplistic view sometimes expressed on behalf of the Government that that is somehow the result of juries who cannot cope with the amount of information and the time scale of cases is unsupported by evidence. We must be clear about that. If we want an instructive case study, we need look only at the Enron trial in Houston. It was the fraud case of the century—a huge case, with huge ramifications. It did not lack for evidence, because it took evidence from 56 witnesses, but those responsible managed to conclude the trial in 15 weeks. The jury had nearly six days of deliberation and found the defendants guilty as charged. If that is possible before a Texas jury and a Texas judge, it is not beyond the wit of UK juries and UK judges to effect similar management. In contrast, the BCCI litigation—although it was a misfeasance trial, not a fraud trial—took more than two years, and cost more than £100 million in legal bills. The two opening speeches alone took 200 days of court time, only for the action to be abandoned, with all that work proving abortive. That is an effective comparison of the effectiveness of trial procedures and the Lord Chancellor—as he is at the moment—the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General need to consider the issue carefully to see how we can make improvements. Like the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, I hope that we will hear no more of the implementation of section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. I think that we have had an assurance from the Attorney-General that if the Government take the view that they need to restrict jury trial further—which I would oppose with every fibre of my being—he will do so by means of new primary legislation. If that is the case, he will no doubt support the amendment that I intend to table in the course of proceedings on the Bill to repeal that section as entirely otiose. We shall then have proof of the Government’s intentions. I shall mention several issues that I hope to address further in Committee. We had a short debate on clause 4, which states:"““A person is in breach of this section if he…occupies a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of another person””." I was not entirely persuaded by what the Solicitor-General said about that provision. He seemed to be saying that he actually means ““the person occupies a position in which he has a duty””—wording that seems entirely appropriate. However, the wording ““he is expected to”” opens the provision to all sorts of challenge, which is entirely unnecessary because there is no suggestion that there is an additional general duty on an individual citizen. I think that is what the hon. and learned Gentleman said, so it is something that we could usefully consider in Committee.