For hundreds of years in Britain, juries have been the cornerstone of the justice system. The right to trial by one’s peers ensures not only that justice is done, but that it is seen to be done. Yet the Labour government is seeking to water down this ancient, and vital, feature of criminal court cases.
Juries help ensure that sentences are proportionate to the crime; in some cases, juries acquit because they consider the charges unjust
The Public Bill Committee is currently scrutinising Government’s proposed Courts and Tribunals Bill. It is scheduled to report to Parliament at the end of April on the bill’s details, after which a final reading and a vote to approve or reject it are expected in May.
The proposed bill would remove the right to a jury trial in about half the cases that currently go to juries, replacing them with judge‑only trials; increase magistrates’ sentencing powers to 18 or 24 months (up from 12 months); and remove the automatic right to appeal a magistrates’ court conviction or sentence to the Crown Court.
Justice secretary David Lammy claims the bill aims to make justice fairer and reduce the backlog of more than 78,000 cases pending in the Crown Court, with some trials currently scheduled for 2029 and 2030. Lammy argues that judge‑only trials will speed up proceedings, taking 20 per cent less time than jury trials. Currently, cases can take average of 332 days from charge to completion.
A better approach than the legislation proposed by Lammy would be to invest in the justice system, so it has the resources needed to tackle the backlog; the crisis stems from funding cuts since 2011–12. The government should also stop treating the justice system as faulty machinery and instead recognise it as critical, sophisticated infrastructure that requires investment to improve performance.
Scrapping juries and cutting off appeals would not fix backlogs as Lammy suggests; it would gut the checks that guard against state overreach and undermine any claim to a fair justice system.
The right to trial by jury is enshrined in the Magna Carta (1215) and the Act for the Abolition of the Court of Star Chamber (1641); together with the right to appeal, they are fundamental protections under the UK’s constitution. These legal norms have also influenced other constitutions, such as the US Constitution’s Sixth Amendment and Article 38 of the Irish Constitution.
The purpose of trial by jury is to ensure that criminal justice – an inherently adversarial process – remains a bulwark against a potentially repressive state, represented by the prosecution. It is a critical safety valve within the legal system. Juries help ensure that sentences are proportionate to the crime; in some cases, juries acquit because they consider the charges unjust or the defendant’s conduct necessary or virtuous, whereas judges may be more likely to convict than juries.
Juries also reduce bias, by bringing together twelve randomly selected citizens with diverse life experiences. Today, 89 per cent of judges are white, 61 per cent are men, and around a third attended private school; fewer than ten per cent come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This class and educational homogeneity matters: judges who attended private schools, Oxbridge and Russell Group universities share not just demographic characteristics but formative experiences.
A jury drawn from the electoral register might include someone who left school at 16, someone who has been unemployed or faced housing insecurity, someone who has done manual labour, or someone from a community with fraught relations with the police. These perspectives bring varied and valuable knowledge about how society functions – understandings of economic precarity, working‑class communities’ relationships with public institutions, and the challenges faced by people with limited education in navigating bureaucratic systems. All of this matters for defendants and victims. A judge’s inability to encompass these viewpoints is not prejudice but the inevitable limitations of a single perspective.
The government’s proposed shift to judge‑only trials would disadvantage future defendants compared with the current system. Parliament should therefore reject any removal of the right to trial by jury – jury trials help deliver fair judgments.
The second major problem with the bill is that it proposes removing the right to appeal a magistrates’ court conviction, which would undermine fundamental constitutional rights. Recent analysis of criminal court statistics shows that appeals from magistrates’ courts to the Crown Court have high success rates: over 40 per cent of appeals against conviction and about 47 per cent of appeals against sentence are successful, often resulting in the original decision being overturned.
This is a crucial route to correct errors made by the magistrates’ court – removing the right to appeal would increase the risk of miscarriages of justice.
A government aiming to make the justice system fairer and more effective must not undermine fundamental constitutional rights and protections dating back to the Magna Carta. Instead, it should invest in the justice system, recognising it as vital national infrastructure – on a par with railways, electricity networks, and health and education services.
A functioning justice system significantly contributes to economic growth, a priority for the Labour government. The UK’s respected justice system is crucial for establishing the trust needed for commerce and investment. Restricting jury trials and the right to appeal might seem like a quick way to clear backlogs, but the delays stem from broader capacity constraints caused by insufficient funding. Improving outcomes for both victims and defendants requires investment in court capacity.
The penal populism of seeking to appear ‘tough on crime’ has led to longer sentences. Between 2012 and 2023, the average sentence increased from 14.5 to 21.4 months, contributing to severe prison overcrowding (now nearly 98 per cent full) and giving the UK one of the highest incarceration rates in Western Europe.
Parliament must not pass the bill in its current form; it will neither make the justice system fairer nor alleviate pressure on prisons. Rather it will have the opposite effect, increasing the risk of miscarriages of justice and eroding public trust in the courts. Such trust has taken over 800 years to build, since the signing of Magna Carta, and would be very difficult to recover. The bill is a half-hearted attempt to patch over a problem which would instead weaken citizens’ constitutional rights and our democracy.
