The ban extends to people on bail pending criminal proceedings. A spokes-woman for the Lord Chancellor's Department said yesterday no documents had been kept to show how many of the 250,000 people called for jury service each year had criminal records. But she added: "We also use random checks to stop those who might have slipped through the net".Under the new system, juries will be selected by a computer that is linked to the national police records.Lord Justice Auld, a judge in the Court of Appeal, is also understood to be drawing up plans for a system of compulsory jury service, as part of his review of the criminal courts.Recent research by the Home Office has found that two-thirds of people who are eligible for jury service use excuses not to attend court. Under the proposals, no profession would be exempt and all those with a valid excuse would have to elect an alternative date for service.The Government's previous attempt to tighten the system by curbing the right to jury trial has run into bitter opposition from lawyers and civil liberty groups. They claim that a defendant's fundamental right to be tried by their peers would be removed from thousands of people accused of middle-ranking offences such as burglary and shoplifting, if the proposals became law.The Mode of Trial Bill was defeated in the House of Lords last year, but the Government has said that it is committed to reintroducing it if Labour wins the next election.Lord Justice Auld has indicated that he also favours reforms that would remove a swath of cases from the jury system. He is considering a new hybrid court with a judge and two lay magistrates to hear cases for middle-ranking offences, those carrying up to two years' imprisonment.The Home Office is also considering plans to abolish juries for serious fraud cases and replace them with a single judge or a panel of experts.This is strongly supported by Rosalind Wright, the Director of the Serious Fraud Office, who says members of the public do not necessarily understand the complicated business practices that often underpin the evidence in big fraud trials.

She has said that this means the jury places too much emphasis on the personality of the defendant.This year a criminal trial had to be halted after a female juror breached the rules of the jury room by telling fellow jurors what her husband thought of the evidence in a case on which she was sitting.. The multimillion-pound trial of Afghans accused of hijacking a plane and holding 173 people hostage collapsed late yesterday after more than three months. The jury, having deliberated for more than 40 hours, passed a note to the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, telling him they were "absolutely deadlocked". The multimillion-pound trial of Afghans accused of hijacking a plane and holding 173 people hostage collapsed late yesterday after more than three months. The jury, having deliberated for more than 40 hours, passed a note to the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, telling him they were "absolutely deadlocked". The case, estimated to have cost £16m, collapsed after the remaining five men and six women insisted there was no "sensible prospect" of them reaching verdicts on the 11 defendants.

One of the accused was cleared of all five charges and a second found not guilty of hijacking alone.No decision has yet been made on whether to hold a re-trial of the politically sensitive case, which has focused a spotlight on the controversial issue of asylum-seeking in Britain.Mr Justice Butterfield said as he discharged the jury that they "should not feel a sense of failure because they had been unable to resolve the case".The Old Bailey court had been told that the group had demanded asylum at the "point of a gun" after hijacking an Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 on an internal flight from Kabul in February last year. On board were 173 people, including 21 children.They diverted the flight via Tashkent, Kazakhstan, and Moscow, and landed at Stansted, the court was told, where they maintained a three-day stand-off, at one point threatening to blow up the jet. All passengers and crew were freed unharmed.At the time, the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, vowed to oversee personally all applications for asylum from the freed hostages and hijackers. He told the Commons: "I would wish to see removed from this country all those on the plane as soon as reasonably practicable.