Justice Sec confirms shake-up
Justice Secretary David Lammy MP has confirmed that jury trials will be scrapped for offences carrying sentences of less than three years, in a major overhaul of the criminal justice system aimed at tackling the enormous case backlog.
Speaking in the Commons this afternoon, Lammy confirmed that jury trials are being scrapped for offences carrying a likely sentence of under three years, with these cases instead fast-tracked through new judge-only “swift courts”.
Jury trials will still apply to the most serious and almost all indictable offences, such as rape, murder, aggravated burglary and grievous bodily harm.
The confirmation follows reports last week, based on a leaked memo between Lammy and ministers, in which he set out plans to ditch jury trials for all but the most serious offences.
Lammy, a trained barrister, said the new system will see cases handled around a fifth faster than jury trials, as the Crown Court backlog nears 80,000 cases and some trials are listed as far ahead as 2029.
Commenting on the changes, Law Society of England and Wales vice president Brett Dixon said:
“The government’s proposals go too far in eroding our fundamental right to be judged by a jury of our own peers. Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations, including two magistrates sitting alongside a judge in the new court, retained an element of lay participation in determining a person’s guilt or innocence. The government’s proposals remove this. Allowing a single judge, operating in an under resourced system, to decide guilt in a serious and potentially life changing case is a dramatic departure from our shared values.”