DESPITE being dogged by controversy already, Home Secretary Jack Straw today ploughs on with the Bill that would curb the right of thousands of defendants to trial by jury.

He takes justice down a dangerous path.

And a pertinent question about this venture is why Mr Straw should favour it now when, in opposition, he damned similar Tory proposals as "wrong, short-sighted and likely to prove ineffective".

Does not this sequential display of ambivalence suggest that governmental pragmatism is superseding its principle - and that of a fundamental principle of British justice: everyone's right to be tried by their fellow men?

For even if the protests of lawyers and civil rights campaigners may be tainted with concern for their legal aid revenue if thousands of cases a year are taken out of the Crown Court system and determined instead by magistrates, it does not follow that the basic ethics of their complaints are devalued.

Nor do the attractions of saving the taxpayer some £70 million a year and unclogging the judicial system outweigh the fact that the rights of thousands of individuals charged with offences stand to be diminished. It may be that the Crown courts are choked with defendants who could well have been dealt with by magistrates and that, vexingly, many in any case change their plea to guilty, wasting considerable time and money.

But if an estimated 22,000 people a year accused of middle-ranking offences such as minor theft or indecent assault were made to have their cases heard in the lower courts - for all the gains of economy and efficiency that now seem to charm Mr Straw - it would still mean that some people will have the lost the opportunity of having the fullest and, arguably, the fairest hearing of their case.

No matter what changes of mind have persuaded the Home Secretary that this is an improvement, that upshot is not wholesome.

It falls, therefore, to our legislators in parliament to put aside the politicking on this crucial issue - despite one side of the House being now poised to oppose what it once proposed and the government doing the opposite - and ask whether cheaper, swifter justice will be better justice.

The lives, liberty and reputations of thousands of people depend on the answer.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.