Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway) (Lab):
In the limited time available, I will start by giving the Government the benefit of the doubt. It hurts to do so, but I will. I accept for the purposes of argument, and these arguments only, what they say about the slippery slope, the wedge and creep.

What depresses me and many others more than anything else in the Bill is the presupposition that jury service is an unaccountable burden on our fellow citizens. Jury service is not a burden; it is a privilege. It is a privilege which derives from the freedoms with which we were all born. We did not earn the privilege; it has been passed to us from generation to generation over 800 years. Like all privileges, it is not necessarily a pleasure. Often it is not, but as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said earlier, jury service can be and often is a pleasure, particularly on long trials. He mentioned that long associations are made between jurors and that occasionally they marry. I recollect being invited to just such a wedding after my client, no doubt as a result of the representation that he received, was convicted by those jurors.
We live in an age when our fellow citizens are accused of hedonism, apathy and an indifference to social responsibilities and the way in which they live. Nobody who has sat through a long fraud case or a long trial and watched how jurors—our fellow countrymen—deal with these cases can agree. People come as jurors to trials believing that they will never understand them. After weeks, the fascination with the trial grows. The jurors learn; they bring concentration to the trial. All that gives the lie to the false psychology that tells us that our fellow countrymen have an attention span of three minutes.
In the closing minutes of this debate I wish to point out that we have a right to be tried by jury in this country, but we also have a right to try. That is as much of a right. The Government are not simply giving up the right of people to be tried, but are conceding the right of professional judges to try our fellow citizens which has been with us for 800 years.
Having said that I would give the Government the benefit of the doubt on the question of creep, wedge and slippery slope, in truth I do not concede it. This Government have a rotten record. They have terrible form for attacks on jury trial. They started completely unprovoked in 1998 with murder trial Bills and have continued throughout. We have gone through a black period in the political history of civil liberties in this country. Many of us hope that that black period is rapidly coming to an end. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] If the epitaph is to be forcing this piece of
illiberal legislation through Westminster by the use of the Parliament Act and, as has been emphasised, by the use of Members whose constituents will never be affected by it and who will continue to enjoy the benefits of jury trial, that will not only cost Parliament dear. When the Labour party goes again to the electorate, it will cost it dear.