Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-17
Topic: Law and Crime
David Pannick (Crossbench, Unknown): I shall speak to Amendment 259B in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble and learned lord, Lord Judge Clause 169(2) would allow a jury to be in a different physical location from the judge, so long as all 12 members of the jury are in the same place as between themselves. I am very concerned about this proposed power. In order to ensure the effective management of a criminal trial, a judge needs to be in the same room as a jury. The judge needs to be able to communicate effectively with the members of the jury. The judge needs carefully to watch the jury to see that they are focused and ensure that their needs are addressed. The judge needs carefully to watch the relationships between the 12 members of the jury. The jury needs to be able to communicate speedily and easily with the judge if it has any particular issue that it wants to raise. Members of the jury need to be able to study the witnesses giving evidence—what they say, what they do not say, and their body language and facial expressions while doing so. All this is so much more difficult through a computer screen, as we have all discovered, whether through court proceedings or parliamentary proceedings, during the pandemic I have had very helpful discussions with the Minister about this matter, and I am very grateful to him and thank him for those discussions and the time that he has devoted to them. I understand from him that the Government have no plan to encourage the use of remote juries. Instead, as I understand it, the Government believe that this would be a useful power essentially for three reasons: we may be afflicted by another pandemic; there may well be advances in technology; and, in any event, this power may be useful today if a judge and lawyers, for example, go on a site visit and one or more members of the jury is physically disabled, in which case the site visit can be watched by the whole jury online. That is the example that the Minister gave me I have to say that I find these justifications unpersuasive. I am always suspicious of broad powers being taken in legislation "just in case". I certainly do not doubt the Minister’s good faith, but his assurances as to what is intended to be done under this proposed power do not bind—cannot bind—his successors in office to what he has done; they may have very different proposals or intentions as to the use of these powers. With great respect, the site visit example is, I think, very far-fetched. I am not aware of any such problem in any case in recent years, if ever In any event, if Ministers think that provision should be made for such a limited, specific use of remote hearings, with juries in a different place to the judge and the defendant, let it be made clear in the drafting of the clause that a remote hearing cannot take place with the jury in splendid isolation from the judge, the witnesses and the defendant in relation to the hearing of oral evidence, the submissions of counsel or the summing-up by the judge Although they have not yet been spoken to, I express my support for Amendments 259A and 259B, both of which concern aspects of the proposed power to be conferred on the court to require a person, including a defendant, to take part in proceedings by audio or video link. I can well understand that this may be a useful power for a preliminary hearing, but not for a substantive trial, unless the defendant consents to that. I am very unhappy about this in relation to young persons There are real issues as to whether a defendant would have effective access to a hearing, were his or her presence to be remote, and real concerns as to whether they could effectively communicate with their legal representatives. The Ministry of Justice may be hoping to save some money if it does not need to transport defendants from prison to court, but I am doubtful that it will save much money because it will need to invest in very high-quality computer systems. In any event, I fear the price will be a reduction in the quality of justice, and that price is too high.