Labour once praised juries as justice’s guardians, now it wants to push them aside, writes Dr Kieran Mullan MP

The jury trial represents something deeply rooted in our character. As a country we instinctively understand that power must be balanced and that ordinary people should have a voice when the state sits in judgment over one of their fellow citizens.

Juries embody that instinct, grounded in the common sense and moral judgment of the public. In that way, we protect people fairly.

The right to trial by jury is therefore one of the cornerstones of the English legal system and one of the foundations of our free society.

Labour are now taking an axe to that right to disguise their own failures. These proposals represent an unwarranted constitutional erosion of our justice system while doing little to address the underlying causes of the court backlog. Juries protect the public from judicial overreach, keep justice rooted in common sense, and act as the safeguard between the citizen and the state.

Weakening that safeguard is constitutional vandalism.

Yet that is precisely what Labour’s Courts and Tribunals Bill proposes to do. The Bill represents a profound shift in how justice is delivered in this country. It removes defendants’ right to choose trial by jury for thousands of serious offences where the accused faces years in prison.

It introduces trial by judge alone in the Crown Court, something not even recommended by the review Labour claims drives these changes.

Legal experts, practitioners, and former judges have warned that dismantling the jury system in this way risks undermining confidence in our justice system.

Polling has also previously shown that the public remains strongly supportive of jury trials, with nearly half of voters expressing discomfort with limiting access to them.

It also represents a sharp reversal of Labour’s own previously stated position. David Lammy himself described juries as the guardians of impartial justice.

He wrote that our legal system is built on the principle that the law must be applied impartially and that in the most serious cases juries are the guardians of that principle.

Keir Starmer made the same argument, describing trial by jury as an important safeguard in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual and supported the right to jury trial across criminal cases.

Yet this government now proposes to greatly restrict that right in one of the most significant changes to criminal justice in modern times.

Removing juries will not solve the underlying problems in our justice system. Independent analysis suggests it could reduce the backlog by just 2 per cent. That is without considering the time and energy that will be taken away from delivering the real solutions.

Cases will simply be pushed around the system rather than resolved more quickly. If the government is serious about addressing delays it should focus on increasing court capacity and improving the way cases move through the system. That means better case management, encouraging earlier guilty pleas, increasing Crown Court sitting days and extending operating hours through more effective use of technology and prisoner transport.

Opposition to these proposals is already growing. The backbench rebellion against plans to scrap jury trials continues to gather momentum. Dozens of Labour MPs are understood to have serious reservations about the Bill.

Nor does the government’s wider record on criminal justice inspire confidence.

Nearly 50,000 prisoners have already been released early under the SDS40 scheme, in future thousands of paeodphiles, rapists and seriously violent offenders will have their jail time cut and more than 260 prisoners have been accidentally released in the past year alone.

Having lurched from crisis to crisis, the Government is now reaching for the bluntest possible tool to cover up its failures.

Parliament now has the opportunity to stop this. There is clear unease on the government benches and MPs will have the chance to defend one of the fundamental principles of British justice.

What's worse, the Courts Minister has admitted that the government would want to do this anyway, even if there were no backlog. So when will it stop if they get this through Parliament?

MPs now face a clear choice. Parliament can protect one of the oldest safeguards in our legal system, or it can allow it to be dismantled piece by piece.

Conservatives will vote to defend the right to trial by jury.

I urge colleagues across the House, including those on the Labour benches who recognise the danger of these proposals, to do the same.

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Dr Kieran Mullan MP is the Shadow Justice Minister

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