Are Lammy’s jury trial proposals justified?

The Home Secretary, David Lammy, proposes to abolish jury trials for a wide swathe of criminal cases presently tried in the Crown Court. But will his proposal survive?

Whenever home secretaries propose this reform, it is met with howls of protest – led by the legal profession. Indeed, in 2001, sitting on an even larger parliamentary majority in the Commons, Jack Straw proposed a similar reform, only to be beaten back.

Lammy’s initiative is on the back of a recommendation made by the recent Leveson review. Every time there is a review of how complex cases are tried in the Crown Court, the same recommendation is made, for example by the Roskill review in 1987 and the Auld review in 2001.

It is mistaken, however, to allege that what Leveson proposes is an overreaction to the crisis of a backlog of cases engulfing the Crown Court. Just like his predecessor reviewers, Leveson believes that restricting jury trials is justified in principle.

Internationally, trial by jury is on the decline. During the past decade, Canada and most of Australia have adopted different models of determining if an accused prosecuted for the most serious crimes is guilty; broadly, either abolition of juries outright in favour of a judge-alone trial or granting the accused the right to choose either of those alternatives. In those jurisdictions, when the accused is allowed to choose, they predominantly prefer judge-alone.

Our European neighbours, moreover, would remind us that criminal trials are justly decided and command public confidence in their countries where the jury system is unknown.

We should also be willing to embrace change. Recent experience makes the case for reform. First, we should cast aside our sentimentality and admit that juries are far from perfect arbiters as to where the truth lies. The Criminal Cases Review Commission exists to identify cases where juries mistakenly convicted the accused; shocking miscarriages of justice have occurred. Second, juries can be corrupted by organised crime, leading to tainted acquittals. Third, in the longest trials, which can last many months, juries do not represent a cross-section of society. The self-employed, single parents and many other types of individuals, including those who may deliberately absent themselves, are all excused from lengthy jury service.

The fact that an apparently overwhelming number of lawyers and Crown Court judges oppose reform should not be decisive. The vast majority of doctors opposed the founding of the NHS in the 1940s. Fundamental change is rarely hailed by the incumbents of an existing regime.

There was an era when trial by jury was regarded as sacrosanct in civil litigation, but juries gradually disappeared from this sphere – and there was no outcry that this represented a denial of justice to the parties. Moreover, the abolition of the jury system permitted a raft of innovation that enabled trials to be conducted with far greater efficiency. Indeed, judge-alone trials in civil litigation facilitated root-and-branch rethinking about how best courts can assist in the resolution of disputes. Perhaps the greatest overall conceptual change here is the discarding of the notion that litigation, argument and examination, is best conducted orally before a court.

From the perspective of the accused, a judge-alone model has considerable attraction. First, they get – in contrast to now – a speedy trial. The appalling spectre of people held in custody, locked up for 22 hours a day awaiting trial for years – and sometimes pleading guilty to avoid that agony – should no longer haunt the system. For those on bail charged with, for instance, a serious sexual offence, their eventual acquittal in say, 2029, may be a pyrrhic victory. Those defendants are systematically denied justice. Second, for some accused, receiving a reasoned judgment is better than an impervious verdict. In cases of notoriety and widespread pre-trial publicity, the accused may justifiably think that they are more likely to receive a fair trial from a judge.

Corresponding advantages accrue to the alleged victims. Their wait for justice is diminished, and for those who desire it, there is transparency: they get to read why the judge decided as they did on the evidence.

In short, I support giving the accused the right to choose in all offences – a right they have now in relation to wide category of offences known as “either way” ones, triable by magistrates or by a jury. Making a judge-alone trial mandatory may be justified only in the tiny proportion – just one per cent – of complex fraud cases, that use up a huge amount of resource.

The article by Consultant, David Corker was first published in the FT Advisor on 11th December 2025.