You turn if you want to, but this Lammy is also for turning
MPs have voted in favour of a bill which proposes to reduce the number of jury trials.
On Tuesday, the Courts and Tribunals Bill passed its second reading in the Commons (304 votes to 203), indicating that MPs approve of its general principles. It will now progress to the next stage where a committee of MPs will scrutinise it in more detail.
David Lammy, the Justice Secretary and deputy PM, told the Commons this week that the proposals would free up "thousands of hearing days" in the crown courts for more serious cases to be heard, adding that the government had inherited a court system "close to breaking point".
Lammy said the lengthy waiting times for cases to be heard were an "injustice" and argued that without modernisation the current backlog could jump from its current figure of around 80,000 cases to 200,000 by 2035.
The bill, which follows a review of the criminal justice system by Sir Brian Leveson, includes clauses which would remove the right to jury trial for cases which carry a likely sentence of up to three years, replacing them with a judge-only trial in new 'swift courts'.
The proposals would mean magistrates taking on more work, empowering them to hear cases which carry a sentencing range of up to eighteen months’ imprisonment (up from one year currently), with a back-up power to allow them to pass sentences of up to two years.
Just ten Labour MPs voted against the bill, while 90 abstained.
The bill has been met with criticism from across the legal profession with more than 3,200 lawyers, including more than 300 KCs and 22 retired judges, signing a letter to Keir Starmer urging the government not to “force through an unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced change to our jury system”.
The letter, organised by Bar Council chair Kirsty Brimelow KC, includes signatories such as Criminal Bar Association chair Reil Karmy-Jones, all Circuit leaders, a former Director of Public Prosecutions (not Sir Keir), several former chairs of the Bar and the Criminal Bar Association, and a crop of current and former politicians with legal backgrounds such as Lord Charles Banner KC and Anna Soubry.
(Legal celebrities of various tiers have also put their names to the letter including Judge Rob Rinder, Shaun Wallace from The Chase, and both barrister contestants from this year’s Traitors series, Harriet Tyce and Hugo Lodge.)
"We ask that the government now listens to our voices, as solicitors, barristers and recently retired judges who have evidenced measures that reduce the backlog of cases without requiring curtailing jury trials," states the letter, which argues that the bill goes further than the proposals put forward in Leveson's review.
Bar Council Chair Kirsty Brimelow KC said: “This letter and its more than 3,000 signatories demonstrate the unequivocal principled and practical opposition to the restriction of jury trials from not only the Bar, but the legal profession as a whole".
“There is no doubt that the criminal justice is in crisis caused by decades of underfunding – not juries," she said.
“It’s not too late for the government to listen to us as experts and as a profession and stop before bulldozing our jury system. We are ready to support a turn to the efficiencies that will increase productivity and will actually make a difference to the backlog and delays.”
Flora Page KC, a member of the Legal Services Board, resigned from her position on Thursday in order to speak against the proposals.
Page, who acted for subpostmasters wrongly accused in the Post Office Horizon scandal, wrote to Lammy explaining, “I am resigning because I need to be able to speak freely against the Courts and Tribunals Bill, and the radical incursions it will make into the ancient right to trial by jury".
"I cannot stand by silently and let the Lord Chancellor rip the heart out of that constitutional principle", she said.
“We can still trust juries, but every other part of the system is falling apart", said the barrister, stating that it was "the result of successive governments failing to prioritise justice“.
"Until now, I have tried to hold the line of opposing the policy without speaking out against the ministers or the ministry responsible for this travesty", she said.
Comments
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Raah!
Absolutely furious that decisions are going to be made by trained professionals and not a gaggle of twelve rando's that they dragged out of the local bingo hall!
Why can't we just keep pretending that it's the middle ages forever?
If we're not careful we'll end up like the third world hellhole of continental Europe where this kind of intelligent decision making is rife. Just think how awful that would be!?
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Anna Soubry, Flora Page KC and Kirsty Brimelow KC are quite clearly far deeper thinkers and are obviously on the right side of this argument whereas Lazy Lammy and Sir Brian Leveson KC are definitely not and are just trying to penny-pinch and to come up with yet another illiberal and authoritarian knee-jerk solution which is an affront to justice and human rights.
Are we living in a Country where such fundamental and hard-won rights are able to be cast aside by the stroke of a pen following a majority Commons vote by the ill-educated and unaware Labour Members?
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I trust juries only marginally more than judges captured by decades of training and promotion by genuflecting to a particular consensus on values. I genuinely would rather be judged by an AI.
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The only thing standing between us and tyranny is the hard-won right to have Brenda from the checkout in Iceland determine whether Barry The Pedro is guilty of touching kids!
Without that we'd be exactly like the rest of the civilised world, subject to the arbitrary horror of having trained legal professionals judge criminal cases with nothing but a highly visible and democratically accountable system of appeals to keep them in check. Unthinkably barbaric!
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I demand my right to be tried by a system in which the decision makers are both untrained and totally unaccountable!
If defendants can't be randomly acquitted because a couple of strangers on the jury arbitrarily decide that the law shouldn't apply on this occasion then Hitler might has well have won!
The last thing I want is judgements made by qualified people who have to give their reasons and whose decisions are subject to oversight and review, that would be fascism.
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Welcome to 'Parliamentary Democracy' - they get voted in, and they do as they d*amn well like.
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Mega lol at all the woke Muppets who cried loudest about Brexit lining up to performatively squeal about how terrible it is that our justice system will soon function just like all of our continental neighbours.
Hey guys, why do you want to be such little Englanders? Isn't it time you gave up on the glory days of the Empire and joined us in the modern world? Stop living in the past.
Ha ha ha.
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I was in a conversation with some local judges. One of them was recounting their day in the local Crown Court. It involved a jury trial of a person accused of assaulting an emergency services worker.
There was no physical force involved - the accused apparently lunged forward with their teeth bared, which made the police offer believe the accused intended to bite them.
He was found guilty, and fined £500 (plus victim surcharges & etc)
Their view was that this was absolute waste of time and resources. It was not a 'serious assault'; it could far more easily and quickly have been disposed of in the Magistrates' Court.
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@10:41 - What's your point caller?
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@11.05 - Sorry, thought the point was self-evident - that it is sensible to restrict jury trials to those matters that really require it.
Allowing what are by any measure minor matters to tie up the Crown Courts wastes time and resources that could be better deployed elsewhere.
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That would have been a police/CPS error, it should have been Assault PC (a summary only charge) as opposed to Assault EW (either way).
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If Lammy was not such a craven incompetent he would look at the massive increase in litigant in person claims all facilitated by AI, gumming up the courts and costing everyone a fortune.
Where before the nutters would send a green ink letter ever few weeks, now you get a ten page document the next day, drafted by ChatGPT, which on the far of it seems credible but is actually rubbish. It is the vexatious litigant’s dream. But yes let’s get rid of juries instead.
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For decades, Canada has limited jury trials to cases where Crown has proceeded indictably. (The Criminal Code was amended by Parliament on the recommendation of standing committees in consultation with legal groups across the country.)The legal world did not come an end.
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And Reform are “fascists”
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"For decades, Canada has limited jury trials to cases where Crown has proceeded indictably."
Which is of course why everyone regards Canada as a far-right cesspit in which the population live in terrified fear of their near fascist government. The very name of the place is a byword for tyranny.
No correct-thinking progressive would ever want to be like them!
Full jury trials for petty theft cases are the bedrock of liberty!
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I believe there was the odd trial by judge at the Munich People's Court.
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13 March 18:04
Unfortunately the Canadian example on starting off with clear rights and safeguards which are then either significantly whittled down or removed from the Assisted Dying legislation and protection farrago there do not give any confidence that their “solutions” or in-built safety mechanisms actually work or are sufficiently robust and those failures have significantly adversely affected legislative and parliamentary confidence in the UK on that topic so that the sensible legislation proposed here to be introduced by Private Members’ Bill will almost certainly be lost for yet another generation in the Lords.
Canada is not always a good example to pray in aid in these very important legal matters.
🤧