Schedule 33: Jury service Paragraphs 4 to 11
883.These paragraphs make provision consequential on the repeal of Part 3 of Schedule 1 to the Juries Act 1974. Full-time serving members of the armed forces are at present entitled to excusal as of right from jury service if, but only if, their commanding officer certifies that their absence would be prejudicial to the efficiency of the service in question. With the abolition of excusal as of right, service personnel who do not wish to do jury service will, like everyone else, have to apply under section 9 or 9A of the 1974 Act and show “good reason” why they should not serve as summoned. A commanding officer’s certificate is, however, to be regarded in future as conclusive evidence of good reason for the purposes of these provisions, so that on its production a jury service summons will be deferred; if there has already been a deferral or if the commanding officer certifies that absence would be prejudicial for a specified period of time, then service personnel will be excused altogether from the obligation imposed by the summons. But that is without prejudice to the position should a further summons be issued on a future occasion.
884.Paragraph 12: Sections 9A and 9 of the Juries Act 1974 deal, respectively, with discretionary deferral and excusal. If a person who has been summoned to do jury service can show that there is a “good reason” that his summons should be deferred or excused, then discretion exists to defer or excuse. The discretion currently rests with the Jury Central Summoning Bureau, a part of the Lord Chancellor’s Department, which administers the jury summoning system on behalf of the Crown Court in England and Wales. With the abolition of most of the categories of persons ineligible for jury service, and of the availability of excusal as of right, many of these cases will now fall to be dealt with as applications for excusal or deferral under sections 9 and 9A. New section 9AA, introduced by this paragraph, places a statutory duty on the Lord Chancellor (in whom responsibility for jury summoning is vested by section 2 of the 1974 Act) to publish and lay before Parliament guidelines relating to the exercise by the Jury Central Summoning Bureau of its functions in relation to discretionary deferral and excusal.
885.Paragraph 13: Section 19 of the Juries Act 1974 gives an entitlement to jurors to be paid, amongst other things, a subsistence allowance during the period they are serving on a court case. This paragraph will enable the Court Service of the Lord Chancellor’s Department (which administers the Crown Court, and the payment of jurors’ subsistence allowances) to pay this allowance otherwise than by means of cash. Some court facilities enable staff to obtain refreshments by non-monetary means, such as a voucher or an electronic ‘swipe card’; this paragraph will enable them to extend the same means to jurors.