The right to trial by jury is an ancient liberty for good reason, and it’s nothing to do with nostalgia.
They are the ultimate bulwark against political oppression because a jury can acquit anybody, for any reason, and no government can lean on them or a judge to do anything else.
So it is staggering that this genuine, longstanding right – admired and emulated the World over - is proposed for abolition by a so-called “progressive” Government that reveres the artificial construct of the ECHR and “international law”, whilst devaluing the human right that existed for hundreds of years before any of that was ever thought of. Worse, this change is driven by a managerial impulse - clearing a backlog - rather than any pretence at principle.
David Lammy himself has said that jury trials are fundamental to our democracy and must be protected. Yet now that he has become Justice Secretary, he proposes to do the opposite, stripping away the right to be judged by one’s peers in most criminal cases and keeping juries only for the gravest offences.
Under the leaked plans, judges would sit alone in many trials that currently go to a jury, and magistrates would see their powers extended.
Defendants facing serious allegations would lose the right to elect trial by jury at all, with officials admitting that as many as three-quarters of all trials could move to judge only (and frankly, it could be much more than that).
Trial by jury flows from Magna Carta’s promise that no free man shall be seized, imprisoned or ruined “except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land”.
Removing it for bureaucratic convenience is not reform, but vandalism. A jury is a vital check on the power of the state, especially in cases that touch on politics, protest or conscience.
Twelve citizens, drawn from varied backgrounds and life experiences, are less likely either to drift into groupthink or be subject to pressures from a government. And it works.
Scrapping the right to trial by jury brings shame on Britain — and it won’t work — Robert Courts
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Having spent many years at the Bar, I have seen how juries defend liberty in practice. Again and again, twelve men and women have cut through legal jargon, tested the Prosecution’s – the State’s - narratives, and insisted on basic fairness.
And they usually, in my view, get it right. That quiet, stubborn independence cannot be replaced. Yet, removing all this is being sold as a technical fix to a court backlog, which is genuine and a major problem.
But here’s the thing: abolishing juries won’t work: they aren’t the problem, and so untested judge-only courts are unlikely to cut the backlog in any meaningful way.
The real problem is people and money. The criminal Bar has been run down for years - since the days of the last Labour government - with talented young advocates driven out to more profitable areas of the law by punishing hours and derisory legal aid rates.
If there aren’t the lawyers, you can’t run a trial, whether the judgment is provided by a magistrate or by a jury. I know it’s uncomfortable, because no politician wants to give pay rises to lawyers (who everybody thinks are stupendously well paid, even though the ones working in the criminal justice system are not) when they can put the money in more popular places.
But being in government, which Starmer and Lammy badly wanted to be, means you must face unwelcome realities: if you do not pay for barristers, you will not get trials, and you won’t have a justice system. Or not, at least, one we would be proud of.
And so instead of proper funding – which would, yes, mean getting a grip on the UK’s runaway benefits system - leading to more active courtrooms and more lawyers to serve in them, ministers reach for the abandonment of a core constitutional protection that has served this country outstandingly well for more than eight centuries. Who does this Government think it is that it can take this right, which has existed for the best part of a thousand years, away?
When we read of American Founding Father and Second President, John Adams, telling his countrymen that the right to a trial by jury, along with representative government, serve as “the heart and lungs of liberty” - what makes Lammy and Starmer – Starmer, the legalistic, process-obsessed lawyer, of all people - think it is right to remove this from us?
They’re not the first people to face Budget pressures, bureaucratic backlogs, or difficult policy environments. But instead of facing up to the hard graft of finding the money to fund advocates, judges and court staff, this Labour administration has reached for a Whitehall wheeze that not only will not solve the problem, but trashes an ancient liberty.
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