Minister admits jury trials would be curbed regardless of courts crisis

The government would still curb jury trials even if the criminal courts were not in crisis, the courts minister revealed yesterday - as MPs demanded yet again to see the impact assessment for the proposal. 

When the plan to axe a quarter of jury trials was announced last month, justice secretary David Lammy said the reforms were necessary ‘to tackle the emergency in our courts’.

Defending the proposals in a Commons debate yesterday, courts minister Sarah Sackman said: ‘People ask me, “Sarah, would you be doing this if there was not a crisis in our courts?” I say yes, because we need a better system. One in which courts, not criminals, triage cases.

‘We need a system that makes better use of jurors’ time and ensures that someone accused of shoplifting is not in the same queue as a victim of another crime. No one has had the guts to take on a programme of reform of this scale, but this government have the guts. The Conservatives had 14 years to fix the system, but they ran it into the ground. We make a different choice, we are bringing forward change.’

The minister’s comment was picked up by MPs, with the Conservative’s Steve Barclay questioning why the reform did not feature in Labour's manifesto.

The matter was put to justice minister Jake Richards later in the debate, who replied: 'We absolutely have to drag the criminal justice system into the 21st century by modernising its structures, but the context in which we operate clearly has an effect on that programme. The fact that we have inherited an unprecedented backlog in our criminal court system affects the urgency and radicalism of that reform.'

Yesterday’s debate once again suggested Lammy will face an uphill battle to get the reforms through parliament.

Labour’s Karl Turner, who served as shadow legal aid minister when Sir Keir Starmer became party leader, said the ‘ludicrous proposal’ would not work. He also noted its absence in his party's manifesto. 

The government faced renewed calls to publish its impact assessment. Sackman said the impact assessment needed to assess the legislation that is brought forward.