Juries out? Why Labour is scrapping some jury trials – The Latest

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0:27It's a system we know is in urgent need of reform. He's calling it a once-in-a-generation reform. It's radically reducing the number of jury trials. The backlog means that justice is being delayed day after day and has really huge human consequences. But David Lammy is facing opposition from lawyers, judges and MPs in Parliament. Our centuries-old right to jury trial is not an ornament of the past. It is the living example of a fair trial. From The Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough.

1:05I'm joined by Alexandra Topping, senior reporter at The Guardian. So David Lammy has just stood up in the Commons to announce these really quite radical plans to overhaul the justice system. He's had to row back a little bit from what he wanted to do, hasn't he? But what's he just said? Well, Lammy has just stood up in the Houses of Commons and said that the majority of cases, of criminal cases, will now be heard not in front of a jury, but in front of a magistrate or a judge. So he's calling it a once-in-a-generation reform. It's radically reducing the number of jury trials in this country. And so crucial to this is these either-way cases, which is this middle ground between the most serious offences, which automatically go to the Crown Court and summary offences which automatically go to the magistrates.

1:53So this is when people have a right to choose whether or not their case is heard before a judge or in front of a jury, right? So effectively he's taking away that choice for those people. Yeah, and the way Lammy described it in Parliament was, you know, if somebody has stolen a bicycle, you know, when they decide that they want their case to be heard in front of a jury, well, that may have a knock-on effect and mean that somebody who's waiting for their rape trial to come in front of a jury. Can't hear it until, you know, 2030. And that is not quite right. There are quite serious cases that can be heard either way.

2:27It includes sexual assault. It can be sexual assault, coercive control, assault, some cases of fraud, drug offences. So there are quite serious cases that are generally heard either by a judge or by a jury, but this is just taking away that option. And Brian Leveson, who wrote the report that this decision is based on, reckons that by setting up these new so-called swift courts, the cases will be heard about 20 % faster. So the backlog being around 80 ,000 cases that are currently waiting to be heard, but that's expected to rise to about 100 ,000, isn't it, in the next three years. So is that why David Lammy thinks that these kind of new types of swift courts might help expedite things?

3:11In some ways, I think his hands are tied. You know, there is a massive problem in the justice system. And there's not anyone on either side of the house who is going to disagree with that. You know, the backlog means that justice is being delayed day after day and has really huge human consequences, both for victims and defendants who can't get on with their lives. So everybody agrees that there's a massive problem. And everybody agrees that the court system is crumbling in this country. And it has been massively underfunded for decades. Everyone knows that too. but this is something that you can do with relatively little money and that is the case for Lammy.

3:46What Lammy has been accused of doing is not fighting hard enough for the actual funding that the criminal justice needs in order to tackle the myriad of reasons that court cases are delayed every day and instead of doing that you know he's going for this this thing that will possibly increase the number of cases that are heard will will get rid of this blockage but you know that's not been proven yet. So he's going for this big reform as opposed to kind of tweaks that could make the justice system work more efficiently, like creating more sessions where courts sit, but instead he's going for this really major reform.

4:22Well, Lammy's argument is that the government is doing everything all at once and it has to because there is such a massive crisis and he's not wrong on that. But the question is about the amount of money that is available. Most people, most of our listeners here won't have been to a court that recently. And for those of us who do regularly, it's actually shambolic. You know, you have courts that are falling to pieces. You have courts that video links don't work, where prisoners haven't turned up. Where they can't print out the piece of paper. They can't print out the piece of paper, where evidence is put in front of a court, like minutes before the case is due to be heard, where there aren't enough barristers, where they can't find a barrister until 2028.

5:02So there are so many problems within the system. This is just one of them, but it's a lever he's got and he's decided to pull it, despite it being obviously quite controversial. Yeah, and at a time where we've learnt that there were 12 more prisoners accidentally released last month. A whole jury's worth full, in fact. Well, there you go, exactly, a dozen. So, I mean, people may argue and have done that the justice system is already crumbling under the weight of responsibilities it already has in those basic responsibilities. So creating a whole new type of swift court might be slightly challenging.

5:38You have a specialism in violence in women and girls. You've been reporting very deeply into this issue for many years now. We know that this will have a big impact on victims of sexual assault. But just talk to me about the types of conversations you've been having with victims of those cases who've had to wait many years for justice to be done. Are there people who would welcome this type of change? I think there certainly are. I mean, people in the women's sector, you know, thinking particularly about organisations like Great Crisis, have been mourning for years that delays to rape trials particularly have devastating consequences.

6:16And it means that people very often fall out of the justice system altogether because they just can't face it. They can't face a four-year wait of putting their lives completely on hold. I've spoken to victims who have just told me of the trauma of going through the trial and waiting for the trial was worse than being raped. So, you know, it's not like we don't need to fix this. We do need to fix it. The backlog is completely unsustainable as it is. And it's having terrible consequences for the people involved in the criminal justice system. It's just whether or not, you know, if this is the only lever that you pull, is it going to work?

6:52Yeah, and David Lamy did just in the Commons just now say that if a person was raped in London today, they might not have a trial until 2028, which is very stark. I've actually heard of cases where people have been put on bail for rape until 2030. So it's huge. And presumably the rates of dropping out are very high as a result of that as well. That if you're being told you need to wait half a decade to get your trial heard. And there are record numbers of women dropping out of criminal justice trials at the moment. The latest statistic I heard about it was one in five. And in the vast majority of rape cases, which, you know, is something that I know more about, you know, most of the vast majority of cases never make it to trial.

7:36So for the ones that actually do make it, they're the strongest cases. They're the ones that have most chance of actually resulting in a conviction. And so to see such a huge dropout rate in those cases really does make you think that, you know, how is that justice in any way, really? Which, you know, obviously argues in favour of expediting the justice system to honour victims of these very serious crimes. But there has been a lot of concern from people in the legal profession, in particular, when these plans leaked out last week, hasn't there? Walk me through some of what those concerns are.

8:07What keeps coming up again and again is that the ability to be tried by your peers is a foundational stone of our legal system. It's like in the Magna Carta, you know, it's part of the very basic fabric of what justice means in this country. So there is one very strong kind of philosophical argument against the reduction of jury trials. And there's other really strong arguments which kind of look at it in a different perspective, which is that our judges and magistrates in this country, whilst eminent and well-trained and with years of service behind them, are yet fallible. And they are humans with the same biases and prejudices as a jury.

8:52We also know that the judiciary in this country is much whiter than our population and 44 % of our judges are women, about 12 % are from an ethnic minority background and only 1 % are black. And that hasn't changed for years. So Diane Abbott was one of those who stood up today in Parliament and said, you know, this is really problematic and she's really worried and a lot of other people are really worried that this could create more miscarriages of justice. The entire House is concerned about victims, including attacks on women and girls. But the entire House is also concerned about the men and women who will undoubtedly suffer miscarriages of justice if the right to trial by jury is curtailed.

9:43There was also just one really interesting thing that came up just now when I was listening to the debate, which was an MP who said, you know, you have to be careful that you don't create an us and them situation where the vast majority of crimes are tried by this kind of preeminent upper level of society represented by the judges who are kind of passing judgment on everybody else who's underneath. And I think, you know, that's an interesting debate to have as well. So we've been talking a lot about trust in the government this week. I mean, clearly the government is asking a lot of people to think very radically about the way justice is carried out in this country in terms of trial by jury.

10:24Is this the right moment for them to do that? And do you think David Lammy has managed to bring people along with him today? I mean, I think when you're letting prisoners out and you don't know where they are, understandably, people think that you haven't got a grip of what's going on. And the only thing that you can guarantee not out of this government, but out of any government, that there will always be individual cases of, you know, of things that are going wrong that dent people's confidence. But I think the government's argument would be it has to be now because things have got really bad.

10:58You know, we're at a crisis point. And even though these things are difficult to do, they might be unpopular to do. Nonetheless, something needs to be done. And that crisis being 100 ,000 cases in the courts in the next three years that are waiting to be heard. The crisis being that there is a huge backlog, part of which was a result of COVID, but mainly is because of years and years of austerity and huge swathing cuts to the legal system in this country. You can't carry on like that. You know, there is a strong argument that, well, actually, what we really need is reform, yes, but also loads more money in the system to make it work.

11:41I would think they will argue, well, we are doing what we can with the resources that we've got. And, you know, trust us. Let's see how that goes. It's a big ask. Alexi, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. We'll be dropping into your feeds every weekday evening with what you need to know about the story everyone's talking about in around 10 minutes. And please do give us a watch over on YouTube. Today in Focus will be back with you as normal tomorrow morning and we'll see you tomorrow night This is The Guardian