Britain04 October, 20262 min read
Andy Burnham Scraps England And Wales Jury Trial Curb Plan, Alex Norris Says
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Andy Burnham abandoned the plan to curb jury trials introduced under Starmer. Court backlogs expected to fall this Parliament despite the U-turn on jury trials.
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U-turn on jury cuts
Prime Minister Andy Burnham abandoned a plan to curb jury trials in England and Wales by scrapping a proposed Crown Court Bench Division for judge-only trials, Justice Secretary Alex Norris said. Norris told the BBC that introducing legislation for judge-only trials “was always going to be the most complicated to implement” and would have slowed down the wider reforms. Norris said the backlog would start falling “in this Parliament” and would fall significantly over the next decade “as a result of the changes we’re making,” while the Ministry of Justice said only complex fraud and financial offences would be judge-only.
The Ministry of Justice said thousands of medium-level crimes would stay with volunteer magistrates who sit without a jury, and the Conservatives called the decision a “major victory” for those who fought to defend trial by jury. The Criminal Bar Association warned that the revised approach would keep more middle-ranking cases before magistrates and shift 25,000 cases a year onto magistrates’ courts, including 5,500 jury trials.
Backlash and competing claims
Andrew Thomas KC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, welcomed the decision and said, “Justice needs juries,” adding that “Nothing inspires more public trust than 12 ordinary citizens from all walks of life deciding the facts of a case together.” Nick Timothy, shadow justice secretary, described the proposals as “restricting juries by the back door, scrapping the right to elect one and dumping those cases on magistrates whose backlog is at a record high.” Claire Waxman, victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, said victims “are being asked to place their faith in a plan that ministers themselves previously argued would not be (enough)”.
Liberal Democrat justice spokeswoman Jess Brown-Fuller said the proposal “should never have been introduced in the first place,” while Green MP Sian Berry called the U-turn “a victory for justice and fairness.” Barrister Karl Turner, who had the Labour whip suspended after he criticised the plan, welcomed the decision and thanked Prime Minister Andy Burnham “for his support during my campaign”.
Backlog figures and what next
The BBC said the courts backlog currently stands at nearly 81,000 cases, having rocketed largely thanks to cuts before the pandemic and court closures during national lockdowns. The BBC said official projections estimated it could reach 100,000 before the next general election and, in a worst-case scenario, climb to double that number by 2035. The BBC also said there were indications the backlog was stabilising after the government committed unlimited funding to pay for more judges to sit in courts that were otherwise being unused.
The Ministry of Justice figures cited by East Renfrewshire News showed 80,829 cases still to be dealt with at the end of June, with the backlog almost doubling since 2020. The Straits Times said the government announced it would scrap the plans to remove the historic right to trial by jury for defendants in less serious criminal cases where a jail sentence was likely to be less than three years, after sustained criticism from lawyers and politicians.