British life-style: No money – no justice. One lawyer said, 'This is a stitch-up’

The Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy (pictured) announced in a briefing to all government departments that 'there is no right to a jury trial' in Britain and judges alone should handle the bulk of cases to cut the backlog in UK courts.
Photo: dailymail.co.uk

Jury trials are to be scrapped for all but the most serious crimes under a bombshell plan, which lawyers say will destroy faith in justice and our democracy, ‘The Daily Mail’ writes.

A leaked memo revealed the biggest shake-up in the criminal justice system for 800 years as Labour proposes to end jury trials for most offences, apart from murder, rape or manslaughter cases.

In an extraordinary U-turn after years of heralding the importance of jury trials, the Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy announced in a briefing to all government departments that 'there is no right to a jury trial' in Britain and judges alone should handle the bulk of cases to cut the backlog in courts across the country.

The Justice Secretary wants to create a new tier of court with judges dealing with tens of thousands of criminal offences to reduce the backlog of almost 80,000 cases.

But the plans were immediately denounced by lawyers as a 'stitch-up' that will usher in secret justice, 'destroy justice as we know it' and could lead to civil disorder as prosecutions would be reduced to a 'bureaucratic formality', with decisions taken on legal reports submitted to a judge rather than evidence tested in open court.

Mr Lammy was also accused of rank hypocrisy after years of insisting 'jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement'.

Instead, Mr Lammy wants to send all cases where there is a possible sentence of up to five years to a lower-tier court, with the only exceptions being murder, rape, manslaughter or cases deemed to be in the 'public interest'.

It is anticipated that as many as 75 per cent of trials would be decided by a judge instead of a jury under the plans.

Asked what Sir Keir Starmer's view is of the plan, given that when he was Director of Public Prosecutions he said 'the general and overriding presumption should be jury trial, with very, very limited exceptions', a spokesman for the Prime Minister told reporters: 'I'm not going to comment directly on the source of this story, but more broadly, jury trials will remain a cornerstone of our justice system for the most serious cases.

Senior criminal justice figures described the plan as 'the biggest assault on our system of liberty in 800 years', saying it would bring Britain back to the days of the Star Chamber in the 15th century when judges handed out arbitrary rulings without any scrutiny.

One lawyer said: ‘This is a stitch-up.’

Former Attorney General Suella Braverman said: 'This is a serious assault on our liberty. Trial by your peers is a fundamental right in our democracy and goes to the core of who we are as a nation.'

Riel Karmy-Jones KC, the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: 'This is beginning to smell like a co-ordinated campaign against public justice.

'Juries are not the cause of the backlog. The cause is the systematic underfunding and neglect that has been perpetrated by this government.’

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