CTB0089 – Matthew Slocombe

Submission to the Public Bill Committee

Courts and Tribunals Bill 2024-26

Focus of this submission: Clauses 1 and 2 (removal of the right to elect trial by jury); Clauses 3, 4 and 5 (Crown Court Bench Division); Clause 7 and Schedule 2 (restriction of appeals from magistrates' courts).

1.  Introduction

The right to trial by jury is not a quirk of tradition or, as the Justice Secretary has recently described it, "a peculiar way to run a public service." It is a constitutional protection, one established in 1215, affirmed in Bushell's Case in 1670, and copied by democracies across the world precisely because it works. It interposes the judgement of ordinary citizens between the prosecuting power of the state and the individual defendant. Twelve people, randomly selected, with no professional stake in the outcome, deciding whether the state has proved its case. That is not inefficiency. That is the point.

This submission opposes Clauses 1 to 5 and Clause 7 on four grounds: the government's own figures show the reform will make only a marginal difference to court capacity; the proposals go significantly further than the reviewer the government commissioned actually recommended; there is no electoral mandate for any of it; and the people now driving these changes have previously argued, in public and on the record, against doing exactly this. They were right then.

2.  The Prime Minister and Justice Secretary: They Knew, and Said Nothing

This is the part that should concern this Committee most, because it goes to whether the public were given an honest choice at the last election.

Keir Starmer is not a politician who stumbled into views on jury trials. He is a barrister by training, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, and a man who spent decades inside the criminal justice system before entering politics. In 1992, he wrote: "The right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. The further it is restricted, the greater the imbalance."

That is not a throwaway comment. It is a considered professional view from someone who understood exactly what was at stake. He understood it in 1992. He understood it in 2024 when he wrote his manifesto. He chose not to tell voters.

Would he have been elected if he had been honest? Would Labour have won if the manifesto had said, "I am a barrister who believes jury trials are fundamental, but once in power I intend to remove them from the vast majority of criminal cases"? The answer is obviously no. He did not say it because it would have cost him votes. And now it is being done anyway.

The Justice Secretary's position is even harder to defend. In June 2020, when the Conservatives were exploring temporarily suspending jury trials during the pandemic, David Lammy posted: "Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea." He added: "You don't fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as being unfair." When the specific idea of replacing juries with a judge and two magistrates was floated, he warned it "would reduce the diversity of those making life-changing decisions about guilt."

When a BBC presenter put all three statements to him in December 2025, Lammy insisted he had not changed his mind. That answer does not hold together.

In 2017, Lammy produced an influential review into the treatment of ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system. He gave juries a largely clean bill of health, writing that "successive studies have shown that, on average, jury verdicts are not affected by ethnicity" and describing jury deliberation as something that "acts as a filter for prejudice." He also found that many Black, Asian and minority ethnic defendants "neither trust the advice that they are given, nor believe they will receive a fair hearing from magistrates," leading them to elect Crown Court trial despite its higher sentencing powers.

Lammy identified the jury as the filter against prejudice. He found that minority defendants choose jury trial because they do not trust the alternative. He is now removing that filter and eliminating that choice, without publishing an equalities impact assessment. The Committee should demand one before these clauses proceed further.

Two of the most senior figures in this government, both legally qualified, both with documented public statements defending jury trials, chose not to share their real intentions with the electorate. Whether that was strategic silence or a change of position that conveniently arrived after the election, the result is the same. The public were not told. They should have been.

3.  No Manifesto Mandate

Labour's 2024 manifesto made no mention of removing the right to jury trial. No proposal to restrict the right to elect Crown Court trial, no judge-only swift courts, no curtailment of the right of appeal from magistrates' courts. Several Labour MPs noted this explicitly during the January 2026 debate. As one commentator observed, "an admission that it intended to virtually abolish trial by jury would have been a vote loser." The government knew. It said nothing. That is a democratic deficit at the heart of this Bill.

4.  Labour MPs Who Have Said So Publicly

Karl Turner MP, Kingston upon Hull East

Karl Turner, former barrister and MP for Kingston upon Hull East, has called the proposals "unworkable, unpopular, unjust and unnecessary" and described removing jury trials without first funding Crown Court sitting days as "a dereliction of duty." In January 2026 he became the only Labour MP to vote with the Conservatives in defence of jury trials, breaking the party whip for the first time in sixteen years. His opposition is personal as well as principled: in 2002 he was wrongly charged with handling stolen goods, elected for Crown Court trial by jury, and was acquitted when the prosecution offered no evidence. Under this Bill, he would not have had that choice.

In December 2025, nearly 40 Labour MPs wrote to the Prime Minister saying they were "not prepared to support proposals to limit jury trials." Turner has said he believes 67 Labour MPs are prepared to defy the government when the Bill returns to the Commons. At Second Reading on 10 March 2026, 90 Labour MPs abstained, most of them tactically, intending to press for amendments at this stage. This Committee is the moment they were waiting for.

Diane Abbott MP, Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Diane Abbott has warned that women could "undoubtedly suffer miscarriages of justice if the right to trial by jury is curtailed," a concern that sits directly alongside the conviction rate data and the near-removal of any right of appeal.

Clive Lewis MP, Norwich South

Clive Lewis has warned that authoritarian governments "pick particular issues which they feel a section of the public may be exasperated about, and then use that to prise open your rights, once the law is there, the law can then expand to target anyone. Liberty is something to be protected, and it has to be universal, otherwise next it will be your liberties that will be attacked and undermined." The backlog crisis is the exasperation being used here. The jury trial right is what is being prised open.

5.  The Numbers Do Not Justify This

The government's headline claim, that swift courts will deliver justice 20% faster, refers to individual case length, not the overall backlog. Even using the government's own Impact Assessment, the overall reduction in Crown Court workload comes to approximately 3.5%. The Institute for Government puts it at 1% to 2%. Rape victims currently waiting over a year for their cases to be heard would, under this Bill, have their cases heard approximately one week earlier. That is what the removal of an eight-hundred-year-old constitutional right buys.

That 20% figure comes from Leveson himself, who admitted it is "little more than a guess." The government's Impact Assessment used it as the median estimate. The Criminal Bar Association has described that assessment as "meaningless verbiage" and "total gibberish."

There is a further flaw the Impact Assessment ignores entirely. When juries deliberate, judges continue with other work. In judge-only cases, judges must deliberate themselves, consuming court time currently used for other trials. The real saving is likely smaller still.

Approximately 42% of appeals against magistrates' court decisions are successfully overturned. Nearly half of all defendants who appeal are found to have suffered a wrong outcome. Under this Bill, with the appeal route largely closed and magistrates empowered to imprison people for up to 18 months, those defendants will have no remedy. That is not modernisation. It is the removal of a safety net at the precise moment the government is increasing the height of the drop.

Sir Brian Leveson recommended restricting, not removing, the right to elect jury trial. He proposed a judge sitting with two magistrates, not a single judge alone. He recommended keeping the maximum magistrates' custodial sentence at 12 months, not 24. On every material point the government has gone further than its own reviewer advised, while citing him as its authority.

For contested trials, the conviction rate in the magistrates' courts is approximately 71%, against approximately 56% in the Crown Court. That 15 percentage point gap represents thousands of people acquitted by a jury who would not have been acquitted by a magistrate. With no right to elect and no meaningful right of appeal, those people will have no route to a fair outcome.

6.  The Wider Pattern

This Bill must be read alongside the government's approach to protest rights. Labour came to office in 2024 having criticised Conservative restrictions on peaceful protest, then defended those restrictions in court, then pressed ahead with a Crime and Policing Bill introducing new protest offences and further restrictions despite the Court of Appeal finding the previous government had acted unlawfully.

Protest rights and jury trial rights serve the same function: protecting citizens from state overreach, one in public, one in court. When a government restricts both in the same parliamentary session, without a mandate for either, and the individuals driving those restrictions previously argued against them publicly, a reasonable person is entitled to ask where the principled limit is.

7.  Recommendations

•          Clauses 1 and 2 should be removed. The right to elect trial by jury must be preserved. Any future proposal to restrict it should be based on robust evidence, not a figure the reviewer called "little more than a guess," and must not exceed what the government's own reviewer recommended.

•          If the Crown Court Bench Division proceeds, it should be constituted as Leveson actually recommended: a judge with two magistrates, not a single judge alone.

•          Clause 7 and Schedule 2 must be substantially amended. With 42% of appeals overturned, removing that right while expanding sentencing powers is unacceptable. The right of appeal on both fact and law must be retained.

•          A full equalities impact assessment must be published before these clauses advance. The Justice Secretary's own 2017 review found that minority defendants disproportionately elect jury trial because they do not trust magistrates. His government has not explained how removing that choice serves them.

•          The government must explain to this Committee why investment in sitting days, legal aid, and administrative reform cannot address the backlog without removing a constitutional right that has stood since 1215.

Closing

Keir Starmer wrote in 1992 that the further the right to jury trial is restricted, the greater the imbalance between the state and the individual. David Lammy said in 2020 that jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement and that you do not fix the backlog with trials widely perceived as unfair. Both men were legally trained. Both understood what they were saying. Neither told the electorate in 2024. Both are now doing the opposite.

The legal profession is opposed. The public were not asked. The evidence does not support it. Nearly a hundred Labour MPs would not back it at Second Reading. The right to be tried by a jury of your peers is not a convenience. It is the difference between a justice system that belongs to the people and one that belongs to the state. This Bill moves in one direction only, and it is the wrong one.

References

Keir Starmer, legal article, 1992

David Lammy, posts on social media, June 2020

David Lammy, BBC Breakfast interview, December 2025

David Lammy, The Lammy Review, 2017

Karl Turner MP, public statements and interviews, 2025 to 2026

Karl Turner MP and 39 Labour MPs, open letter to the Prime Minister, December 2025

Diane Abbott MP, public statements, 2025 to 2026

Clive Lewis MP, public statements, 2025 to 2026

Sir Brian Leveson, Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, 2023

Government Impact Assessment, Courts and Tribunals Bill, 2025

Institute for Government, analysis of Courts and Tribunals Bill, 2026

Criminal Bar Association, response to the Courts and Tribunals Bill, 2025 to 2026

The Law Society, response to the Courts and Tribunals Bill, 2025 to 2026

Crown Prosecution Service, annual conviction rate statistics

Ministry of Justice, magistrates' court appeal statistics

March 2026

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