Courts backlog will fall despite scrapping of jury trial plan, minister says
BBC News
Figure caption: Justice secretary Alex Norris on the courts backlog and jury trials.
The courts backlog will still fall despite plans to curb jury trials being scrapped, the justice secretary, Alex Norris, has told the BBC.
Norris stated that introducing legislation for judge-only trials "was always going to be the most complicated to implement" and would have slowed down reforms.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham's decision abandons proposals introduced by Sir Keir Starmer's government to allow judges in England and Wales to make the sole decision on cases that would lead to a sentence of less than three years.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has stated that only complex fraud and financial offences would be judge-only, with thousands of medium-level crimes to stay with volunteer magistrates, who sit without a jury.
Norris affirmed to the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the backlog would begin falling "in this Parliament", but declined to specify the extent. He noted that it would "fall significantly over the next decade" "as a result of the changes we're making".
The Conservatives hailed the decision as a "major victory" for those who fought to defend trial by jury, while criminal lawyers expressed concern about the implications of abolishing a defendant's right to ask for a jury trial.
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) warned that this would keep more middle-ranking cases before magistrates and shift 25,000 cases a year onto magistrates' courts.
David Lammy, the former justice secretary, first announced the plans to curb jury trials in December following a recommendation in a major review of the court system in England and Wales.
The backlog - currently standing at nearly 81,000 cases - has been influenced by cuts before the pandemic and court closures during national lockdowns. Projections suggest it could reach 100,000 before the next general election and, in a worst-case scenario, double that number by 2035.
Recent indications, however, suggest the backlog is stabilising after the government committed unlimited funding to support more judges.
Under the original plans, Lammy had aimed to reserve jury trials for the most serious "indictable" offences, which are always sent to Crown Court, including murder and rape. Less serious offences, with sentences of no more than three years, would be decided without a jury in the Crown Court by a judge alone. Even less serious offences would stay in magistrates' courts, abolishing defendants' right to request a jury trial.
The proposals met with an outcry from various sectors of the criminal justice system, with many opponents arguing that eroding the 800-year-old right to trial by jury would not solve the backlogs.