Opinion: Don’t Scrap Jury Trials – Fix the System Instead

Finito World

There are few rights in British life more ancient, more envied, or more emblematic of democratic accountability than the right to trial by jury. Yet, if newly leaked plans from the Ministry of Justice are correct, that fundamental freedom could soon be whittled away.

Justice Secretary David Lammy, perhaps seeking cover in the noisy build-up to today’s budget, yesterday let it be known that is reportedly planning to restrict jury trials to only the most serious offences – murder, rape, manslaughter, and others deemed to pass an undefined “public interest” test. Most other offences, including serious fraud, violent assault and more, would be dealt with by a new jury-less court: a so-called “Crown Court Bench Division”, where judges would decide guilt alone.

This would mark the most profound change to criminal justice in England and Wales in generations. It is, frankly, a terrible idea.

No one doubts that the Crown Court system is in crisis. With more than 78,000 cases waiting to be heard – and forecasts of 100,000-plus by the decade’s end – the current state of delays is an affront to victims, to the wrongly accused, and to the very notion of swift, impartial justice. But let us be clear: this crisis is not caused by juries. It is the product of chronic political failure – years of underfunding, court closures, barrister shortages, and IT chaos. To lay the blame at the door of the jury box is not reform. It is misdirection.

Jury trial has always acted as a check on state power. It is one of the few remaining arenas in which ordinary citizens are directly entrusted with upholding justice. It ensures that those accused of wrongdoing are judged by their peers – not only by the legal establishment. This is not just symbolic. It is a safeguard. In a system increasingly defined by bureaucratic indifference and ministerial spin, the jury offers something rare: real accountability.

To remove juries from the overwhelming majority of serious cases – including, by these proposals, any crime with a sentence of under five years – is to hollow out this tradition. It would create a two-tier justice system, where only the most dramatic crimes merit democratic oversight, and where fraud, theft, assault, and abuse are handled in a stripped-down fashion to save time and money.

This is a dangerous path.

Trial by judge alone may be quicker. It may indeed reduce some backlog in the short term. But it is also easier to manipulate, more prone to unconscious bias, and far less trusted by the public. Ask yourself: in a climate of dwindling institutional trust, what does it say if the state increasingly refuses to allow citizens to sit in judgement of one another?

The logic here is deeply flawed. This is not about improving justice. It is about managing decline. Britain has the infrastructure of a developed legal system with the funding of a failing one. Ministers would rather disassemble the foundations of open justice than commit to fixing the roof. Worse, the proposals – still in the early stages but reportedly supported by Lammy himself – are being sold with a deeply cynical sleight of hand. “There is no right to a jury trial,” the document claims.

This is technically true – the UK has no written constitutional guarantee to trial by jury in most cases. But we do have a long-standing legal tradition that sees jury trial not as a favour, but a fundamental expression of fairness. This is not a technical point. It is a moral and civic one.

There is a better way. If we want to tackle court delays, we should properly fund legal aid. We should invest in barristers, judges, and support staff. We should modernise the court estate, many parts of which remain crumbling and unfit for purpose. We should raise the quality of digital systems and make remote hearings more efficient and fair. Above all, we should stop treating justice like a budgetary afterthought.

The right to a jury is not some romantic relic. It is a line in the sand between a democratic society and an efficient autocracy. Once that line is crossed, it is rarely uncrossed.

David Lammy and his team must resist the urge to break the system further in the name of fixing it. The solution to the court backlog lies in rebuilding confidence, not eroding rights. The answer to institutional failure is not to remove public participation, but to double down on the values that made our system enviable in the first place.

Juries are slow. They are expensive. And they are vital.

We should be preserving them – not packing them away.