UK Law Articles
These articles are reproduced from old newspapers. Whether you are looking for old articles about the Lord Chancellor's Department, or trying to find stories on solicitors, judges or courts, the law teacher article database is here to help you. You will find these articles useful for writing your law essays, law dissertations and law coursework.
The Times
September 30 2000
Jury Bill heads for stand-off
BY ROLAND WATSON, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
THE Government was heading for a protracted and increasingly bitter stand-off with the legal profession and civil liberties groups yesterday, after vowing to press ahead with plans to curb the right to jury trial.
Ministers tried to brush off the defeat inflicted on its judicial reform in the Lords on Thursday night. Charles Clarke, the Home Office Minister, said that the Government would "certainly proceed with legislation".
He issued a warning to senior members of the legal profession that they needed to think again about their attitude to reform. Maintaining their opposition to the Government meant they risked appearing "entirely out of touch" with the rest of the criminal justice system.
The defeat, the second time a coalition of Tory, Liberal Democrat and rebel Labour peers has rejected the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill this year, effectively kills it.
Ministers could railroad it through using the Parliament Act in the next parliamentary session. However, Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, the Labour peer, said such a move would be seen as a "terrible display of arrogance", and it is thought unlikely that the Bill will reappear this side of an election.
Civil liberties groups said that Mr Blair had made much in his conference speech this week of being a "listening" Prime Minister, and urged him to drop the measure.
The proposals would remove the right of defendants to elect jury trial in a Crown Court instead of a magistrates' court for a variety of mid- ranking charges, such as theft and burglary. The decision on where these "either way" offences was heard would be taken by a magistrate.
