Friday, January 26, 2007

Another nail in the coffin of the Magna Carta

All the while the home Office has been burying it's own bad news in other bits of it's own bad news, and the gay adoption row has dominated the headlines you may have missed the fact that The Fraud (Trials Without A Jury) Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons yesterday. The BBC has this.

The government does not believe that juries can handle long complex fraud trials. The fact is that this is rubbish. American juries handled Enron. (See the BBC here) The real problem is that our lawyers don't appear to be able to organise it properly.

It seems a bit like the Home Office saga. Labour can't run the Home Office so wants to split it up rather than fixing it, except of course that trial by jury was enshrined the the Magna Carta (Great Charter) back in 1215. So there we go. Another vital part of our constitution down the pan because this government can't fix simple problems and learn from others.

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