Speeches by Mullan.

“In summary, the proposal for a Crown court bench division in complex and lengthy trials requires a robust mechanism for appeal on allocation if it is to be fair and effective. By including a right of appeal now, we would prevent the waste of resources associated with post-trial retrials, close the legal black hole crea…”

“I talked before about how judges will look to what Ministers have said around a measure in trying to interpret it, so if a judge is not clear what was meant by this, and pulls up Hansard to read what the Minister has said, surely they will take from the fact that the Minister has talked about the disruption to a juror’…”

“Currently, when a person sits on a jury, it is understood that, outside of the most extreme circumstances, they will be there for as long as the case takes. However, if the public get the sense that they can debate what asks are reasonable or unreasonable, I would not be surprised if jury members, in trials that go on …”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“A right of appeal also acts as a check against case hardening. Although our judiciary has many positives, an appeal mechanism ensures that the pressure of the backlog does not subtly influence the application of the law in these circumstances. The right to challenge the forum of one’s trial is a fundamental safeguard a…”

“As I have said, evidence was raised with the Committee about the inconsistency with which this might be approached across the region. A right of appeal ensures that a body of case law is developed by the Court of Appeal, providing clear guidance on when a case must remain with a jury. The perception of fairness is vita…”

“Without this availability of judicial review and a specific right of appeal, we are asking defendants to accept a decision that is functionally unreviewable until—from their perspective—it is much too late. This lack of parity undermines the principle of legal certainty. The necessity of appeal in clause 4 is even grea…”

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“The Minister agreed that in that scenario, there would be no obvious route to the judicial review—as she described it—that currently exists in the magistrates court. If we allow magistrates allocation to be challenged, it is logically inconsistent to deny a challenge to an allocation made by a Crown court judge—particu…”

“One of the most troubling aspects of the current Bill is the inconsistency it creates between the magistrates court and the Crown court. As we have covered to some extent, under our current system, when the magistrates court makes an allocation decision for an either-way offence, that decision is subject to judicial re…”

“The necessary case law will be built up much more quickly and efficiently if those cases are heard as appeals in the first instance, rather than over a lengthy period in relation to conviction after sentence. The witnesses I described therefore strongly recommend that decisions to order a judge-alone trial be appealabl…”

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““For example, without appeals, the ‘public interest’ test will be left to the discretion of individual judges, with no judicial guidance on relevant factors to consider and irrelevant factors to ignore. The same risks attach to the concepts of ‘lengthy’ and ‘complex’. There is a significant risk of inconsistent and arb…”

“My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate has given one example, but another, with which I expect people will be familiar, is the LIBOR trials. They were very complicated and sophisticated, and the appeals were successful because of a judge. It was the judge’s misdirection to the jury that led to the LIBOR trials becoming …”

“Clause 4”

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“Dr Hodgson and Dr Thomason go on to say:”

“The only point I would add is that, as the Minister has accepted, this is a relatively small number of cases, so the test of what is justifiable is actually disproportionately weighted against the Minister in these cases, in comparison with the earlier cases on clause 3. People’s rights and expectations remain the same…”

“I am sure we will get to hear from the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington shortly. The proposal in clause 3 is being framed as a mere administrative adjustment—a common-sense fix for a system under strain. The Government’s plan to introduce a Crown court bench division, where a judge sits alone without magistrates to…”

“Private prosecutions are not a marginal feature of our justice system; they are relied on by charities, specialist organisations, and in cases where the state lacks the capacity or resources to act. Charities lose up to £849 million a year to fraud, and where the system does not act, private prosecutions step in. Macmi…”