Trial by Jury - This is one of the core principles lying at the very heart of our heritage, our culture, our identity, our democracy.
Juries are the way in which we, the public ourselves consent to, and participate in, the exercise of the gravest power the State holds: the power to convict and imprison. My colleague, Alicia Kearns, posed the crucial question when she asked,
‘Who in this place can honestly say that if they were facing incarceration, they would be happy with just one judge and no jury making that decision?’
Under the Government’s proposals, however, thousands of defendants will be stripped of their right to a trial by their peers. The Government plans to introduce a new tier of ‘swift’ court presided over by a single judge to rank between the magistrates and Crown courts which will decide on theft, serious assaults and many sexual offences.
This is why I was so pleased that, as part of the shadow cabinet, we prioritised this Labour Government’s scrapping of jury trials for the first Opposition Day Debate of the year held on the 7th of January. These debates are a way in which HM Opposition can hold the government of the day to account on an issue of its choosing. As the Official Opposition, we, the Conservative Party, put forward the amendment,
‘That this House believes that it is wrong to abolish jury trials for crimes with anticipated sentences of three years or less because jury trials are a fundamental part of the UK constitution and democracy; acknowledges the scale of the courts backlog and the necessity of reducing it to ensure justice for victims but believes that restricting the fundamental right to trial by jury will have a limited effect on reducing that backlog; calls on the Government to increase the number of court sitting days to help urgently reduce the backlog; and further calls on the Government to publish immediately all modelling it has undertaken and received on the potential impact of the abolition of jury trials on that backlog.’
We pointed out,
‘There is opposition not just from the official Opposition, but from every other party—Reform, Plaid, independents and the Liberal Democrats. There is opposition from Labour Members—good, experienced colleagues on the Government side. There is opposition in the House of Lords from Labour peers of the highest repute like Helena Kennedy—people who have spent careers in the law. This was not in the manifesto’
The Law Society, the Bar Council, the Criminal Bar Association and lawyer after lawyer has said that this policy is wrong and a better way is possible. This is not party political. It cuts across all parties’
Like so many constituents who have contacted me, I am gravely concerned by the Labour Government’s proposals to abolish trial by jury for almost all crimes. In a direct contradiction of his previous, publicly stated views, the Justice Secretary David Lammy now wants to scrap our ancient jury trials for all but the most serious cases, restrict defendants right to elect for a jury trial, and limit appeals from the magistrates’ court.
In fact, Dr Kieran Mullan (Shadow Minister for Justice) pointed out that,
‘Even with this Prime Minister, who has an unrivalled reputation for having opinions that last as long as they remain popular with whoever’s vote he is seeking at a particular point in time, we are in the extraordinary position where the Government are now putting forward a proposal that the Justice Secretary, the Justice Minister and the Prime Minister himself all previously argued vigorously against.’
He went to quote their own words against them and their decision to launch this appalling, ideological attack on a cornerstone of our legal system.
“Instead of weakening a key constitutional right, the government should do the hard work…We all have the right to be judged by our peers when the prospect of imprisonment from society is before us. To take that right away would be a wholly draconian act.”
(Labour Justice Minister)
Jury trials are fundamental to our democracy. We must protect them.”
(Labour Justice Secretary)
“The right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. The further it is restricted, the greater the imbalance.”
(Labour Prime Minister)
Karl Turner was the one principled Labour MP brave enough to stand against the Government, saying in the debate,
‘I have said that this is a ludicrous proposal, and it really is, because it will not work. There was no mention in the Labour party manifesto of doing away with some jury trials. I suspect the Opposition were as shocked as anybody when they had to give up one of their Opposition Day debates on this subject, because in opposition the Secretary of State for Justice would have gone off his head at the prospect of this being proposed by the previous Conservative Government.’
Removing jury trials is yet another example of the Government showing it simply does not trust the British people. More and more decisions are being taken by judges and bureaucrats, or did not appear in the Government’s manifesto to begin with. Replacing the judgement of 12 ordinary men and women with one State official further erodes democracy and the increasingly fragile trust in the judicial process. Communities will feel judged by a distant establishment, in which fear of an arbitrary government grows.
As Lewis Cocking MP (Con) summed up,
‘From abolishing local councils and cancelling elections to imposing an authoritarian digital identity scheme, it is all part of the same pattern. Again and again, this Labour Government show that they are more than happy to curtail the voice and freedom of the British people.’
The Leader of the Opposition has written to Mr Lammy calling on him to “not abolish the right to be tried by a jury of one’s peers”. Instead, we believe he should fully utilise the available court sitting days and fix the basic inefficiencies that waste hours of court time and money every day. The Justice Secretary should also continue the previous Government’s work of recruiting and retaining more judges and advocates to further build system capacity. Scrapping jury trials is not the answer to the backlogs in the Crown court.
However, Blake Stevenson MP spoke for all of us in the House when he said,
‘I start by saying how extraordinary it was to hear the Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services say earlier that she would be pursuing this policy even if there were not a backlog to deal with. That suggests that it was planned all along, but it is nowhere in the Labour party manifesto.’
Jim Allister MP put it bluntly,
‘For me, the Government lost this debate today when the bottom fell out of their case and the Minister had to say, effectively, that this was not about delay but about an ideology. It is an ideology that ill fits this House and an ideology that the House should most convincingly reject.’
The debate was well attended and I commend all those who spoke so eloquently and passionately against this Labour Government proposal. I would encourage constituents to access the full debate transcript to read the arguments put forward and have provided the link here for ease:
Jury Trials - Hansard - UK Parliament
Sir Ashley Fox MP (Con) pointed out that,
‘We know that this Government have a habit of making bad decisions, getting ambitious Back Benchers to defend them for a few months and sending a hapless junior Minister out to face the media while the Secretary of State hides in his office, only at the last minute to realise what a disaster the plans are before executing a U-turn that comes far too late for them to gain any credit. We have seen that on winter fuel, welfare reform, the grooming gangs inquiry, the two-child benefit cap and, most recently, the family farm and family business tax, so I urge Labour Back Benchers to be very cautious about supporting the Government this evening. They risk voting for something that their constituents do not want and that in their hearts, they know is wrong.’
But despite our plea to the House that,
‘This is not a hill to die upon. Let us fix this problem. Let us build a cross-party consensus’
and, while the Opposition Motion against the Government’s proposals was supported by 182 MPs from numerous parties, it was ultimately defeated by the Labour majority. I will finish by quoting another of my colleagues, Blake Stevenson MP –
‘It is a profound constitutional shift—one that strikes at the heart of the relationship between citizen and state. Trial by jury is a centuries-old safeguard designed to ensure that an individual can be judged guilty only by their peers and not by the machinery of the state. It is the ordinary person’s shield against arbitrary power’
Along with my fellow Conservative MPs and those who will stand with us, I will continue to fight this.
