Nadia on... jury trials

In the early 13th century, in an effort to fund his expensive overseas wars, King John of England imposed taxes on his barons at a scale they had never seen before. When they couldn’t pay up, royal tax collectors showed little mercy, seizing their land and imprisoning them. Eventually, the barons demanded that he obey the law, and when he refused, they captured London in the summer of 1215 to force him to negotiate. The result of the negotiations is now known as the Magna Carta – the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government were not above the law. As well as addressing mandatory taxation and other issues, the Magna Carta enshrined in Clause 39 that “no free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.” This clause would ultimately give rise to the jury system, a right that has become a cornerstone of our democracy – and which the government is now seeking to restrict. 

Last December, the Justice Secretary announced plans to remove the right for defendants to choose a jury trial for crimes carrying a likely sentence of up to three years and in cases that can be dealt with by either a magistrates’ court or a Crown Court. The government claims that this will reduce the backlog of cases in the Crown Courts, which in recent years has reached a record 80,000. When these proposals were presented to Parliament in the Courts and Tribunals Bill in March, I voted against them because I believe them to be fundamentally undemocratic and unjust, with dangerous consequences for people and our society.

It is undeniable that the courts’ backlog has created a crisis, with both complainants and defendants waiting far too long for justice to be served. We can only fix this problem by addressing what caused it in the first place: long-term, systemic underfunding, which has led to court closures and buildings falling into disrepair; legal aid cuts; limits on how many days courts can sit; a critical shortage of qualified court interpreters; failures in prisoner transport provided by private contractors and a lack of capacity in the legal profession.

There has been widespread pushback against proposals to restrict jury trials as a solution to the courts’ backlog. In March, more than 3,200 lawyers wrote to the Prime Minister to say there is no evidence that the plans will solve unprecedented delays. Using the government’s own figures, the Institute for Government’s analysis predicts only 1.5-2.5% of crown court time will be saved through judge-only trials. More recently, Geoffrey Robertson KC, the founder of Keir Starmer’s barristers’ chambers, described the restriction of jury trials as a “betrayal of the values for which Labour purports to stand” and called the proposals a “cure worse than the disease”.

Jury trials are a safeguard against the concentration of power. When this safeguard is removed, even for more ‘minor’ offences, the risk of miscarriages of justice inevitably increases, undermining fairness and public trust in our criminal justice system. I also disagree with the framing of offences carrying three-year sentences as ‘minor’, when we’re talking about something as serious as depriving a person of their liberty. A wrongful conviction and imprisonment can ruin a person’s life.

Judges and magistrates, however diligent, will have their own biases affecting their decisions and are not representative of the public at large. While members of a jury will also carry biases, collectively, these are more likely to be addressed. David Lammy’s own review into the criminal justice system found that jury trials were one of the few parts of the system that are statistically free from racial bias. As Tyrone Steele, the Deputy Legal Director at the cross-party charity Justice, writes in Tribune, “In an age when trust in institutions is brittle, the jury remains one of the few places where ordinary citizens can see, and shape, the law in action.” 

I am also deeply troubled by the government’s instrumentalization of victims of sexual violence to justify these proposals. 13,000 people are waiting for their cases to be heard, with many facing delays of several years. Every single one of them deserves swift justice, but victims’ suffering must not be used to legitimise a reform that will not deliver this. In March, thirty organisations representing victims of violence against women and girls wrote to the Justice Secretary, urging him to drop the plans as they are “deeply concerned that the curtailment of jury trials risks unfair outcomes that undermine justice for everyone”. I was moved by Charlotte Nichols’ powerful speech in Parliament, where she spoke about her own experiences of the criminal justice system as a victim of rape and accused the government of using rape victims as a ‘cudgel’ to drive through changes that will not benefit them. 

The courts’ backlog is a crisis that must urgently be addressed, but the government is proposing the wrong solution entirely. I welcome its decision to lift the cap on court sitting days; the announcement of a £92 million investment in criminal legal aid after years of Tory neglect; and the further £2.785 billion settlement for courts and tribunals for 2026/27. I also welcome the over £1 billion as part of the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, allocated to victims of domestic abuse to access support and rebuild their lives. 

However, the Law Society is clear that this investment is still insufficient to clear the backlog or address long-term infrastructure issues. The government must drop proposals to restrict jury trials and instead properly fund and future-proof our legal system, for the sake of both complainants and defendants; for any one of us, at any point in our lives, could find ourselves on either side of that line.

nadiawhittome.org