Opposition Day: Jury trials

Proposed by Robert Jenrick

I beg to move, That this House believes that it is wrong to abolish jury trials for crimes with anticipated sentences of three years or less because jury trials are a fundamental part of the UK constitution and democracy; acknowledges the scale of the courts backlog and the necessity of reducing it… I beg to move, That this House believes that it is wrong to abolish jury trials for crimes with anticipated sentences of three years or less because jury trials are a fundamental part of the UK constitution and democracy; acknowledges the scale of the courts backlog and the necessity of reducing it to ensure justice for victims but believes that restricting the fundamental right to trial by jury will have a limited effect on reducing that backlog; calls on the Government to increase the number of court sitting days to help urgently reduce the backlog; and further calls on the Government to publish immediately all modelling it has undertaken and received on the potential impact of the abolition of jury trials on that backlog. The Government propose to abolish the right to trial by jury for a vast range of offences and for any case where they expect a sentence of three years or less. This is nothing less than wielding a constitutional axe against a centuries-old cornerstone of our liberty. Juries are not some bureaucratic add-on to our justice system; they are the means by which the public consent to and participate in the exercise of the gravest power of the state: the power to convict and imprison our fellow citizens. Yes, we face a serious Crown court backlog—that is not in any dispute today. That is not even a subject of debate today, because everyone on both sides of the House knows it and acknowledges it. We all accept that its roots did not begin under this Labour Government; it goes back to the pandemic and further than that. We all accept that there has been a lack of investment in our criminal justice system under Governments of all political persuasions, that the criminal Bar is in a weak place, and that young people do not feel they can go into the law or at least not into this most challenging and poorly paid part of it. We all accept that some of our courtrooms are in a terrible state, that the IT system is failing, that the contracts for getting prisoners to court on time are poorly managed and that the private contractors are underperforming. We all accept that the system is in a mess and needs to be reformed, but that is not the question at hand today. The question before us is, what is the best way to resolve this, and is the route to fix our criminal justice system and to deliver swift justice for victims to scrap something that we have known as a country since 1215, if not before?

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