Thousands of lawyers oppose jury restriction plan

More than 3,200 lawyers including 300 top barristers and retired judges have called on the government to drop a plan to abolish some jury trials.

The letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, says there is no evidence the "unpopular" plan will solve unprecedented delays in criminal courts.

The proposals, which return to Parliament on Tuesday, would replace juries in England and Wales with a single judge in cases where a convicted defendant would be jailed for up to three years.

Deputy PM and Justice Secretary David Lammy says this and other reforms can help turn around backlogs which have reached record levels of almost 80,000 Crown Court cases.

The delays mean some defendants charged today may not face trial until 2030.

The right to jury trial - in which ordinary people decide on the guilt or innocence of defendants brought before Crown Courts - is a cornerstone of the constitution dating back more than 800 years.

The letter organised by the Bar Council, which represents all barristers in England and Wales, says the plan is an attempt "to force through an unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced change to our jury system".

'Bulldozing' jury trials claim

"We have long warned that the criminal justice system is in crisis.... Juries have not caused this crisis," says the letter.

It urges ministers to focus on delivering reforms and steps to modernise criminal justice, set out in a major independent review by former senior judge Sir Brian Leveson.

Sir Brian also called for jury trials to be restricted - but his proposal included volunteer magistrates deciding affected cases alongside a professional judge in order to keep a link to communities.

Kirsty Brimelow KC, the senior criminal lawyer who heads the Bar Council, said: "This letter and its more than 3,000 signatories demonstrate the unequivocal principled and practical opposition to the restriction of jury trials from not only the Bar, but the legal profession as a whole.

"There is very little evidence to support even basic rationality of the government's decision to rush through this legislation which unnecessarily removes jury trials from thousands of people.

"It's not too late for the government to listen to us as experts and as a profession and stop before bulldozing our jury system."

Study casts doubt on plan

A study of the court backlogs by the Institute of Government, a think tank, projected that cutting jury trials would save less than 2% of court time, assuming that the cases would be dealt with more quickly.

Research carried out by Lammy in 2017, before he was a minister, revealed that juries were particularly trusted by ethnic minority defendants.

He says many comparable criminal justice systems, including Canada's, have introduced similar reforms to speed up justice with no loss of confidence in the courts.

The Ministry of Justice said that more than 90% of criminal cases were already heard fairly without a jury.

A spokesman said: "With victims facing unacceptably long waits for justice after years of delays in our courts, we make no apologies for pressing ahead with our plans to reform the system based on Sir Brian Leveson's independent review, alongside modernising it for the 21st Century with record investment."