THE rights of the accused must not be forgotten in the Government’s proposals to reduce eligibility for trial by jury, the Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, warned this week.
The Justice Secretary, David Lammy, announced the proposals on Tuesday. They include the establishment of new “swift courts”, in which cases with a likely sentence of three years or less would be heard by a judge, sitting alone. Jury trials would be guaranteed for “the most serious and almost all indictable offences”, including rape, murder, and grievous bodily harm.
“Victims are waiting far too long to get their case to court, and even more are being let down by a system that allows nefarious defendants to try and game the system,” Mr Lammy said. “Justice delayed is justice denied. . . We are putting victims before tradition for tradition’s sake and fairness before those who want to game the system.”
The proposals form the Government’s response to the first part of the independent review of the criminal courts by Sir Brian Leveson, which warned that criminal justice was in crisis. As of December 2024, there were more than 75,000 outstanding cases. Trials were being listed as far ahead as 2029.
This week’s response goes further than his recommendations, which included a new division of the Crown Court in which a judge sitting alongside two magistrates would have the potential to hear all “either-way offences” (cases that can be heard in either the Magistrates or the Crown Court).
On Wednesday, Bishop Treweek expressed concern that the Government’s presentation of the proposals lacked any focus on the rights of the accused alongside those of victims. She said that she intended to ask Mr Lammy how his proposals would take into account his own 2017 review of the treatment of, and outcomes for, BAME individuals in the criminal justice system, which highlighted the presence of unconscious bias (News, 15 September).
She referred to the 17,000 people being held on remand, a significant percentage of whom would not be convicted, and the 50 per cent of women who would not go on to receive a custodial sentence. “Victims face agonising delays; so do the accused, who are innocent until proven guilty,” she said.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, Charles Wide KC, a former judge at the Old Bailey and a Reader in the Church of England, described Mr Lammy’s plans as “outrageous”.
Speaking to the Church Times this week, he spoke of the “brutal cuts” made during George Osborne’s term of office as Chancellor. Judge Wide had “no doubt that much can be done in relation to criminal case management to improve the ‘disposal rate’ of cases without the immense harm of what is being proposed”.
Colleagues working in the system — “demoralised but striving to make the system work” — spoke of empty courts, a lack of permitted sitting days, part-time judges’ not being able to sit for their required days, mistakes by the police and CPS, and failure by the prison service to produce defendants in custody on time or at all. Other factors included failings in the system for providing interpreters and IT and the non-appearance of prosecution advocates. “No one, that I have spoken to, blames jury trial.”
The right to a jury trial was particularly important, given the “polarisation of views on so many issues” evident in the UK, Peter Collier KC, a former Recorder of Leeds, said on Wednesday. It lay “at the heart” of the public’s consent to the powers of the State. The risk of unconscious bias was “significantly ironed out” by a jury, he said, as opposed to a “single hardened legal professional” deciding on guilt.
He also questioned whether removing a jury would significantly reduce trial times: estimates being cited appeared to be “fingers in the wind”, he said.