Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 27 Gorffennaf 1923.
I had not the advantage of hearing my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, but he tells me that, in his speech in which he moved the Second Reading, he stated that the Bill enlarged the existing right of trial by jury, with the result that there will be modifications upon the pre-War rights of trial by jury, and that, I think, is apparent to anyone who is as familiar with these matters as most of my hon. and learned Friends who have discussed this question in the House this afternoon. It is because there are, as it seems to the Government, reasons for modifying in not very important respects the pre-War practice that this Bill has been introduced in this form. I think it will be conceded by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley that this is an advance—not such a great advance as he would desire, but still an advance upon the law as it is enacted in the Acts of 1918 and 1920. The question is whether the Bill, which modifies to some extent the law and practice as it existed before the War, goes as far as is desirable—and not whether the Bill should be rejected because it cuts down the existing right of trial by jury, but does it go as far as some hon. Members think would be desirable in restoring what they call the full right of trial by jury? No one, I am sure, will suppose that the Government, any more than anyone else, has not the greatest possible respect and admiration for the jury system. We have all practised before juries. We admire their courage and independence. It is essentially a British institution and it has been the instrument by which many of our liberties have been obtained. But I would have the right hon. Gentleman notice that the illustrations he gave as to the trial in the City of London a hundred years ago was a case which would certainly have been outside the Bill, as he said, first of all, because it was a criminal proceeding, and secondly, it would have been an action for libel, in which case the right of the litigants to a jury would have been indefeasible under this Bill. I suppose the cases which are in most Members' minds in which the liberties of the subject have been obtained are those famous trials for libel where the jury time after time resisted sometimes the guidance of the Judges as to the law, cases in which to-day under this Bill if it became law the litigants would be entitled to a jury.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested many cases in which a jury would not be given under this Bill in which it would have been given before the War, but I think he is inaccurate in one not unimportant respect. He gave two illustrations outside those which are contained in the Bill in Clause 2 (1, c), as cases in which the litigants would have been entitled to a jury before the War and now would not be entitled. They are cases of negligence and cases of nuisance. In the case of negligence I agree that before the War there would have been an indefeasible right to a jury, and now it will be governed by paragraph (d) and they will be tried with a jury, unless in the opinion of the Master or the Judge the case is more fit to be tried without a jury. But I can hardly conceive any Judge who would say that an ordinary running-down case or a case of negligence is more fit to be tried by a Judge than by a jury.