Coroners and Justice Bill

Does my right hon. Friend not understand that it is a question of scale? In any jury system there are always problems with public interest immunity—there always have been—and we get round them by a mixture of evidential routes that has served us extremely well. We now have a problem in one case—just one case in five years—and to rectify that evidential problem the Government propose to hand a massive new power to the Executive. The disproportionate remedy in the circumstances is obvious to everybody. I know there is judicial oversight, but my right hon. Friend will forgive me for saying that he adulates the higher judiciary only when they are being used as a mechanism to withdraw jury trial. Otherwise, he is rather more critical of them and on occasion has described them both as unelected and unregulated and in various other ways. To say that there is a higher judicial role is not an adequate response. Does my right hon. Friend not understand that that is what concerns most of us in the House?