What is the future for jury trials?

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1:03The New Statesman. What is the future for jury trials? In Tuesday, 10th of March, MPs will debate the courts and tribunals bill in what could be the biggest shake-up of the justice system since the 1970s. The system is in crisis. The backlog of crown court cases now stands at over 80,000 with some defendants waiting years for their cases to be tried. Witnesses are dropping out. Cases are collapsing and lives are put on hold as justice is delayed. To tackle this crisis, the government has put forward proposals to radically reform which cases are heard where, including restricting the right to a trial by jury in all but the most serious cases. I'm Rachel Kahnleff and this is Daily Politics from the New Statesman. I'm joined in the studio today by Sarah Sackman, Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services and MP for Finchley and Golders Green to discuss the legislation and its potential impact on British justice. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us here in the renovated New Statesman CD8.

2:05Looking really good. This is the biggest overhaul of the justice system since the 1970s and key to the reforms are the restrictions of jury trials to only the most serious cases. This is going to also one of the cornerstones of the British justice system. We know it's in crisis. We know that the backlog is now over 80,000 cases in the Crown Courts system. What's the rationale for looking at jury trials as the way to fix this? Well, as you say Rachel, we inherited a huge backlog in our Crown Courts. Most people aren't that familiar with the criminal justice system but at the moment we have enormous delays as you say 80,000 cases. And behind each and every one of those cases, there's a victim waiting for justice, there's somebody accused of a crime, perhaps waiting to clear their name. At the moment, we've got people are being told that they're not going to get a trial if they report a crime today until 2030. That's not justice at all because what's happening increasingly is that witnesses are pulling out,

3:08memories fade, perpetrators are walking away, Scott free. So we're denying justice to hundreds of thousands of people in this country because the system simply isn't functioning. So we're meeting that challenge in three ways by making record investment by allowing the courts to sit as much as they need, investing hundreds of millions of pounds extra into legal aid. By modernising a pretty arcane system, often paper-based using the power of technology to make the courts more transparent and open and by bringing forward the courts bill, which is based on Brian Leverson's review. And what that's designed to do is to provide swift adjusters for victims and to everyone in the criminal justice system. And on the point about juries, which is really important because obviously quite a lot of the political controversy around these reforms has centered on that. I want to be absolutely clear that juries will remain a cornerstone of British justice. They're an essential part of our system. They will remain available to everybody on what are called indictable only offenses. That's

4:09offenses like rape, murder, kidnapping, robbery, serious drug offenses. Anything that's likely to get a sentence of three years or more will still receive a jury trial. But what we're proposing is a modest pragmatic but also principle threshold change in order to bring down these backlogs in accordance with the recommendations of Brian Leverson. I just want to talk about the money there because you mentioned the record investment of the government is putting into the justice system. We've got to go back in time and look at how much money I think has been lost from it. So, Ministry of Justice Capital funding was cut by 70% in the 2010s as a result of austerity. The Institute for Physical Studies estimated that in 2025, day-to-day spending was 14% lower in real terms than in 2007-08 and 24% lower in per person terms. I don't know if like the expectation was that people would commit a quarter less crime. But there is an argument that if this justice system is crumbling because it was defundered, the way to fix it is just to reverse those

5:14funding cuts and to properly fund it. And you don't need to change the structure of how the criminal justice system works. You just need the money to go back into it. So I'd respond to that in a couple of ways. You're absolutely right. The previous conservative government gutted our criminal justice system. I've visited tens of crumbling court buildings which are a symbol of our neglected system, leaky roofs, heating that doesn't work, courtrooms lying empty because they are no longer functioning. They stripped out money from legal aid. They capsitting days, preventing courts from hearing as many cases they could. We are reversing so much of that damage by making more capital investment, by investing in legal aid, by removing the financial limit on what courts can sit. But one of the central conclusions of the independent review on criminal courts is that investment alone will not fix the backlog. And that's because even if you sit at maximum capacity, the data that we've released shows that you can barely keep up with them on. And that's for a couple of

6:15reasons. First of all, police, there are more of them. They're making more arrests, more charging decisions. We've got more cases coming into the system than we did under the previous government. But the other thing is that those trials are each of them are taking longer. And that's partly because each and every one of us carries a smartphone. The first thing that happens on an arrest is that digital evidence gets seized on laptops and on CCTV and on our smartphones. But also some of the procedural protections that we've put in place which make cases fairer. But cases today, trials today are taking twice as long as they did 20 years ago. All of that burden, more cases, the legacy of underfunding. And the fact that things are taking longer on a creaking system, the system has to adapt. And we need to modernise it and bring it into the 21st century. So as I understand it, the proposals are that some of the cases that would be heard in a crown court by a jury would instead be heard by a magistrate's court. And there would also be an additional swift court layer for cases within the crown court system, but to be heard purely by a

7:22judge, is that right? Yeah, that's essentially right. So as a society, we've always made a choice about who can access a jury trial. And that choice was made largely back in the 1970s. So the fact that we're looking at this afresh, I think it's the right time to look at it afresh, less serious offenses have always been heard by a magistrate's court. 90% of cases are heard there already. So it's a tiny proportion that currently receives a jury trial. And what we're suggesting are two major reforms. One is that currently a defendant in what's called a tribally the where fence can insist on their choice of a jury trial irrespective of how serious that is. So suppose someone swipes your phone. That's a theft. And that could be heard with a jury trial. But if it's a fairly modest defendant, that could equally be heard in a magistrate's court. At the moment, it's the defendant's choice as to where it gets heard. What we're suggesting is that the court should triage that. And where it's appropriate for it to be heard by a magistrate, swiftly, more promptly, without clogging up the crown court, it can be heard in that way.

8:26And then the second innovation based on Brian Leverson's reforms is this idea of a crown court bench division, which will be judge only. It's also based on the Canadian model, which works really well in their justice system over there. All of this combined is all about delivering swift justice and fair justice for victims right across the piece. I just want to put to the Institute for Governments figures because they've sort of crunched the numbers on this. And they suggest that even if the number of these either way cases heard in the crown court were cut by a third, that would only reduce the total time spent on these cases by about 2% and they also flag the increased pressure on magistrate's courts. And that's something that I know that the that magistrates have been warning about that they are also facing backlogs and time pressures and the same issues with court buildings and infrastructure and staffing shortages in the crown court system. So how do you respond to that? So we've published with our impact assessment with the bill, our own modeling and what that shows is that the total package of reforms and it's

9:26a package rather than pick a mix delivers 20% demand savings in the crown court. If you were to say we're streeting, you can cut NHS waiting list by 20%, I bet he'd bite your right arm off. You're university with we're streeting. I was at university, but the point being that that is a significant reduction that the package delivers. The Institute for Government is right by the way that the contribution that the crown court bench division, if you look at it in isolation, is a 2% saving on the overall demand. But given the scale of the problem, I need to pull every single lever in order to achieve swift justice. And of course, all of these measures interact with one another. And we think that this is a sensible pragmatic and principled set of reforms designed to tackle a backlog which is totally unacceptable. I don't think anybody says that we can live with a status quo. And as I've said, investment alone won't fix it. Modernisation alone and getting more efficiency in the system won't fix it. We need all three levers, reform, modernisation

10:30and investment. So if it's about fixing the immediate crisis, which is a breaking point, there have been some from Labour MPs to include a sunset clause and to say, okay, we'll make these reforms until we get the backlog down to manageable numbers. But when we fixed it, then we should return to the old system. You've actually said that you believe that these changes, I think you call them ideological. So if it's not just about fixing the backlog, what is it about? Why can't we just undo it once we fix the present crisis? Look, the way I've approached all of this is how do we turn a crisis into an opportunity? The justice system that we inherited wasn't only underfunded. It had not received any real attention on modernisation for decades. If we were to start a fresh and look at our justice system, you know, there are lots of things to commend it. But there are lots of ways in which actually perpetuates unfairness. We've heard throughout this debate discussion of some of the racial disparities that occur in our criminal justice system.

11:36Many women's groups and those campaigning on violence against women and girls have talked about the lack of transparency, how a pay can alienate can feel, how often rape myths are perpetuated through serious sexual violence trials and often complainants say to me, they felt that they were the ones being put on trial through the criminal justice process. So the way I've approached this is fundamentally we've got to address the crisis and deal with it as quickly as possible because there are real lives that are being put on hold and justice being denied as a result of this crisis. But if I'm going to reform it and build something better, then we've got to seize the opportunity to create a more open and fairer justice system. And so just to give you a couple of examples, when we're moving a whole load of trials which can be dealt with more swiftly and more efficiently in the magistrate's court, we need to make sure that that's transparent and so we're making sure that all of those proceedings are recorded. That is a big step forward in terms of transparency. When we create that Crown Court bench division with a judge only, the judge will

12:39have to give reasons for their judgment and any sentencing remarks will be made available to victims. Again, that's a step forward in transparency. So these are examples. Having the court allocate trials, we think that's the right balance for justice, moving away from the defendant's right to insist on their choice of trial. Something which doesn't exist in Scotland, doesn't exist in Canada or in Australia, I couldn't find another jurisdiction where that right exists. So I think the way that we are addressing this crisis is not just ambitious as it needs to be, but it's also about building something better that takes account of the needs of modern society and what groups that have traditionally been failed by our justice system are calling for. We're going to take a quick break at this point, but we'll be back in a moment. Remember, you can listen to all new statesmen podcasts add free by downloading the new statesmen app. It's available on iOS and Android. The links are in the show notes. Subscribe to the new statesmen today and get your first five weeks for only five

13:41pounds. Go to newstatesmen.com forward slash five weeks. Over $1,300 a year before you renew your car insurance policy, do yourself a favor. Download the Jerry app or head to jerry.ai slash a cast. Welcome back to daily politics from the new statesmen. Interesting the point about defendants, whether they should have the right to choose where the trial has had. When I speak to a criminal barrister about this, the question that they the criminal barrister has come out very strongly against this, the question they sort of say to me is if you were wrongly accused of a crime, would you want your case to be heard by a judge who

14:47might have their own bias or lived experience that would be difficult to mitigate or would you want it heard by 12 members of the public and overwhelmingly, people's kind of core emotional responses that they'd wanted to be heard by a jury. I wonder, like, firstly, how you'd answer that question if you're wrongly accused of whatever crime, invent something. But also, you worried that one of the impacts of this could be that sort of the public's faith in how the justice system works could be damaged by feeling like it's an out of touch judge who doesn't have their lived experience, who can't consider all the factors to it as opposed to being judged by their so I think the public's confidence in the justice system is absolutely critical here. We talk about not just justice being done, but justice being seen to be done and the public has to believe that what we are providing is fair and robust justice. You ask me what would I want for myself?

15:47I would want a fair trial and I come back to this point that timeliness is an essential ingredient being told that my trial wouldn't come on until 2030. That is deeply unfair whether I've been accused of the crime or whether I'm a victim of that crime. So this idea about trying to get back to an efficient, timely justice system is really important. The point about judges is a well-made one. Diversity in our judiciary is not where we want it to be and the Deputy Prime Minister and I are really ambitious for how we create a more diverse judiciary. We do have a very diverse majesty, by the way. So by giving more powers to magistrates, these are our lay judges if you like. In London, 31% of magistrates are drawn from BAME communities. They're overwhelmingly state educated. So they provide a really important, if you like, element of diversity into the judiciary. But I think that our judges look it's important that they have proper training and that's something

16:48we're looking at. Do they have proper training in unconscious bias, in how to handle cases involving violence against women and girls? That's essential. The fact that they've got to give reasons, that transparency is so important. You know, when a jury returns a verdict, whether it's an acquittal or whether it's a conviction, you never know why and that's the way that's intended to find you. You don't know what discussions have taken place or how people have arrived at their conclusion. The fact that a judge will need to explain their reasons, I think, is a really important guardrail against bias because if they have been biased, that will be exposed by that. And moving beyond that, we're talking to colleagues, particularly parliamentarians, you represent large BAME communities or who come from those communities themselves. About what further safeguards, we might be able to introduce down the line in order to not only provide safeguards and ensure that fairness, but also to make sure that all of this fundamentally commands the confidence of

17:52all of our communities, particularly those that historically have not had positive interactions with the criminal justice system. I'm going to ask you about your parliamentary colleagues in a minute, but on the question of judges providing their reasoning for it, I think that sounds very virtuous and transparency and accountability is great. But I have also had conversations with people in the legal profession who are quite worried about that because they look at really controversial, high profile cases, whether it's an issue of an immigrant being accused of a sexual offense or an issue of hate speech that gets a lot of publicity. And if the decision is being made by a single judge who is named and has to give their reasons, that judge could then be themselves become sort of a figure of hate and criticism and some of them fear for their safety. And they remember sort of the way that judges and some of the Brexit cases were personally attacked for the decisions

18:54that they made. Well, look, I think we have the finest judiciary in the world, independent, fiercely so, and taking difficult decisions all the time in family court, the decision to perhaps remove children from their parents care. As you say, sorts of decisions in immigration cases or in highly political cases or huge public interest are judges act without fear or favor. I do care deeply about their security and those particularly on the right who attack them personally, who have named them in the past, enemies of the people should be ashamed of themselves. That's completely unacceptable. Sometimes as government, we have to accept rulings that we don't like and we can debate those in the political realm. But I will fiercely defend the independence of our judiciary and I will make sure they have the resources to provide them with the security they need. But I also trust them. The fact that

19:54judges try the sorts of cases that we're talking about in places like Canada, a legal system and a society quite similar to our own and do so fairly. In many cases, defendants opt in Canada for judge alone trials because they see it as often being a preferable route for them. I think our judges are more than up to the task and I think that they will do this really well. Let's talk about the politics of this because there have been some vocal critics, including on the Labour benches, led by Carl Turner, who at one point I think threatened to resign and sound in a by-election if this went forward and has also been out and about saying that it doesn't really matter because the government's going to you turn on it anyway. We've got the second reading coming up on the 10th of March. How big of a rebellion are you expecting? And what's being done to manage that? Because we have seen over the last year and a half a number of issues that don't need to list them for you or our listeners, where the government has belt pressure from back benches on certain key policies. So what's being done to manage that?

20:57Well, look, I fully expect Carl Turner to be walking in through the opposite lobby to me. So I know there will be some disgruntled voices. But for months now, I've been engaging with MPs from every corner of the party, different politics, different regions. It's been fascinating to be honest because the perspective you get on justice, if you're an MP from Norfolk say to if you're an MP representing in the London, justice looks quite different and that's really informed by thinking around the policy. What I've come to see and it's been really striking, powerful, and I've got to say quite motivating, is the strength of feeling particularly amongst the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party, so many vocal supporters of what we are doing, people like Natalie Fleet who has her own live podcast. I know. And it was a great podcast, her own lived experience of sexual violence. She is a great champion of these reforms, Lindsay Farnsworth who was a CPS prosecutor for many years before she entered Parliament. There is a small but

22:02mighty force in the Women's PLP that are really backing of these reforms and that I think has given real colour and passion and impetus that what we're doing is not just a much needed fix to a serious problem in a public service, but that there is something deeply progressive and that what we are doing is actually essential to our mission to have violence against women and girls. So there will be some disgruntled voices, Carl Turner being chief among them, but I'm confident that those powerful voices will be heard loud and clear on Tuesday. What about if it does pass getting it through the House of Lords where I can imagine opposition will be even steeper? I've already been gotten engagement with many of our peers so much thought has gone into this. This has been based on careful work based on the work of Sir Brian Levison. I've engaged with many peers who've got a legal background in the Lords. Many of them have been coming to the sort of drop-ins I've been doing, sharing the data, showing why this policy works and I'm confident that

23:07we will get this through and that I hope that the Lords are respectful as well of the Democratic will of the Commons and that will be important as well. So that wasn't in the Labour manifesto. That's true. The specifics weren't, but any government worth its salt cannot sit by when they've inherited what we inherited and just allow that to drift. The do nothing option, doing nothing here would be a dereliction of duty. When we came into government injustice, it's generally not the most, let's say, politically salient department in government, so much of the focus being on health and education, but all of a sudden we inherited twin crises, a prison system at breaking point completely full to the point where you wouldn't be able to lock up violent criminals and a court system where you've got delays into the next decade. Both of those things show the woeful neglect of the Conservative government and as a government we have been brave, we have been bold in coming up with expert-led plans led by David Gorg and Sir Brian Levison. These are the plans, this is the

24:10fix and we're doing it in a labour way. Let's take another quick break. We are excited to announce that we have launched a new podcast called The New Society exploring life and culture in Britain and beyond. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, subscribe to The New Society feed. In the latest episode we speak to the author Helen McDonald about their bestseller H is for Hawk and what it's like for your life to be turned into a movie. We'll be back after this. Welcome back to Daily Politics from the New Statesman. Since I've got you in the studio, I've got to ask you about the politics of this week that has been dominated by Iran and the US and Israeli strikes and the UK's response to that and the question of whether the US should be allowed to use UK bases. You're a lawyer, you were solicitor general before you were Justice Minister. You also represent a constituency that has large Jewish and Iranian populations.

25:13What do you make of it? Can the UK just sit on the fence and have a half-in, half-out approach to what the US is doing in Iran? Well look, I think it's important that we act on the basis of the legal advice and that's been very clear that we keep cool heads here that we act in accordance with that advice and with the norms that govern the laws in this country and I think the way that we've acted, there are literally British men and service men and women at the moment that are actively involved in the conflict taking out drones that are attacking British bases, British assets, protecting our interests and the national interests in the region. But you mentioned the local and that's really deeply important to me as a local MP. I represent the largest Iranian diaspora in the UK as well as the largest Jewish community and we saw Iranians coming out in their hundreds, maybe even thousands onto the streets of Finchdy and Golders Green on Saturday night, a reflection I think of how momentous the removal of some of the oppressive regime of the malign

26:19regime. But also I think, you know, that real tangible sense of fear for what this conflict might bring. And I think the role that Britain can play is the one that we are perhaps playing, sending a warship, sending support in terms of military resources to defend our national interests, but at the same time ensuring that we support those Brits back home whose lives are obviously impacted by a very, very deep conflict and release. What do you say to the conservative and reform voices who say that the UK government has been slow to act, has been dithering and has put UK security at risk from failing to have a position? I think the UK has taken a very clear position that we would act where we needed to and where Iran has acted indiscriminately in attacking interests in the Gulf or attacking UK bases, whatever that we would defend ourselves. That's a very clear position. It's one as well that aligns with whether I think the British public are,

27:23I think it's clear that the British public are supportive of the position the government has taken. And that's important too, we should be where they are as well as defending our national interest in the Middle East. The other big story of the week, and it feels like it was a lifetime ago, but it was only a week ago, is the Gordon Denton by election, Labour dropping into third place, losing that seat to the Greens in a very painful by-election loss. Imagine the entire party is thinking about how to react and win back voters. Carl Turner, to mention him again, has said that reversing the changes to jury trials could be the way to win voters back to Labour. But again, you're in a constituency that has many diverse ethnic communities and is also in an area that is a green target seat as they're looking to continue their trajectory across London and sweep up the left wing votes. What do you think that they are partying needs to do to get those voters back? I was bitterly disappointed by the result in Gordon and Denton. It's a wake-up call.

28:27I've got to be honest, I knocked on lots of doors in Gordon and Denton as I do in my own constituency. Not one of those doors brought up justice reforms, or they did bring up was the cost of living. The cost of living crisis, which is affecting different people in different ways right across this country, they brought up their energy bills. They brought up the cost of childcare, what it's taking to keep up with the rent or the mortgage. People want us to go further and faster. That message was really clear from the by-election. That works, I think, that approach works in Manchester as much as it does in London, right across the country. We need to be alive to that. People also want us to fix things. When people voted overwhelmingly back in July 24, they voted for a manifesto, which said, on its front cover, change. I understand people's impatience. They want to feel that change here and now. It's taking time because whether it's in our courts, in our NHS, in our economy, those problems are deep-seated. I understand people's

29:31frustration looking for alternative because they're not feeling the difference. But I think, as you saw in the Chancellor's Spring Statement, we're starting to see some of the green shoots, we'll start to see some of the benefits or the policy choices that we have made as a government. But yes, it's a wake-up call, and yes, we have to go further and faster on the cost of living. And what about the Prime Minister's letter in response to the loss with accusations of sort of sectarianism? I mean, again, in your constituency, you've got a lot of different communities there, and that's something that reform has also talked about. The idea that this election in Gordon-Adenton was one because particularly ethnic minority communities voted a certain way. What do you make of that rhetoric and what it's doing to our politics? My politics has always been defied by trying to be a unifier. I'm someone who looks for solutions, not scapegoats. That's the approach of reform, and we saw it writ large in Gordon-Adenton, and we've seen it in the Brexit debate, and in the way that reform practices politics.

30:36You're right. I represent a constituency, which is one of the most diverse in the UK, and our diversity is our strength. I'm proud of that, and neighbours treat each other well, and there is a commonality around a shared aspiration of doing better for your families, of social justice, of looking out for your neighbours. That's actually, I think, key to cohesive politics, and we need to be unifying people around solutions that are real, not offering false hopes on the one hand, or stoking division on the other. That's the alternative that the Labour government has to offer, but we've got to be really careful with our rhetoric. We have a responsibility, I think, with our rhetoric, to be a party that brings people together. That's what I practice with my politics. It's what I practice in the way I am as a local MP. I joke that I think I must be one of the most religious people, because I end up celebrating Eid, Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, you name it. I'm someone who brings

31:41people together, and that, I think, is the right way to do politics in the diverse Britain, that I think is austrant as a country. Sarah Sackman, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. You've been listening to Daily Politics from the New Statesman, with me Rachel Connelliffe, and my guest Justice Minister Sarah Sackman. This podcast was produced by Wobblemer. Our executive producer is Chris Stone. The podcast will be back tomorrow. Use ColoGuard proof in the privacy of your house, and send it back to get your results.

33:09Youth Mental Health is a complex challenge that requires comprehensive solutions. We must strengthen after-school programs. We must make digital literacy tools available in our schools. We must work with mental health professionals to support children, and we must empower mentors, educators, and parents to keep kids happy. Learn more about our commitment to finding lasting solutions at EmpowerOurFutureCoalition.com slash Solutions. Paid for by the Coalition to Empower Our Future.