Deputy PM David Lammy set to announce jury trial reforms

The government is set to announce plans to restrict the right to jury trials in England and Wales in a bid to reverse unprecedented backlogs and delays to justice.

Deputy prime minister and justice minister David Lammy will present the proposals to Parliament later on Tuesday.

His latest “decision”, contained in a document circulating in government circles last week, was leaked to the BBC and The Times.

It is unclear whether the plan, which would end jury trials in all but the most serious cases including murder, has been approved or withdrawn by the Cabinet.

Suggestions to cut jury trials are based on advice from a retired senior judge who told ministers the reform would help tackle delays.

There are currently 78,000 cases waiting to be completed in the Crown Courts. In practice, this means that some suspects charged with serious crimes today may not be tried until late 2029 or early 2030. Officials predict the caseload will rise above 100,000 before then unless further action is taken.

An internal government briefing last week was leaked He showed the final version of the Ministry of Justice’s plans to create new forms of non-jury trialswhere cases will be decided solely by the judge. Therefore, jury trials will end for the majority of offenses currently before the Crown Courts, including theft, most drugs, violent and sexual offences, and fraud.

Cases would definitely go before a jury only if the defendant was sentenced to more than five years in prison or charged with murder, manslaughter or rape.

Volunteer judges, who hear the overwhelming majority of criminal cases in the lowest courts, will have their sentencing powers doubled to two years.

The leaked plan does not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland and was circulated to other departments ahead of final Cabinet signing. It goes further Retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations earlier this year.

Speaking ahead of the announcement in Parliament, Lammy refused to endorse the final package but said there would be an extra £550 million over three years for specialist victim support services and £34 million would be aimed at attracting more lawyers into crime work.

“Juries remain and always will be a fundamental part of our justice system and will play a very, very important role in decision-making,” he said.

“[If] Someone steals an iPhone from an electrician tomorrow; Is it right that this person can choose the jury?

“This case will go into the system, it will take two or three days in court, so rape, murder and more serious crimes will be delayed.

“We are determined to put victims at the center of the system in all decisions we make and to balance victims against the process.”

But Criminal Bar Association President Riel Karmy-Jones KC said it was not the juries but years of underfunding that had caused the unprecedented delays.

“Imposing an untried, untested layer of complexity and cost on our grossly underfunded system with its crumbling infrastructure, in the form of any new part of the Crown Court, is counter-intuitive,” he said.

Many criminal lawyers blame the previous Conservative government for the backlog, saying the courts have been starved of resources for more than a decade.

Robert Jenrick MP, the shadow justice secretary, said David Lammy had defended juries extensively in the past and accused him of abandoning his principles.

“Labour has chosen to spend billions more on welfare payments rather than funding the courts to reduce the backlog,” he said.