Britain's courts are facing a crisis - but the answer is not to strip citizens of one of their most fundamental rights. The answer is to modernise and reform a justice system that has been left starved of investment for far too long.
The Crown Court is in a state of crisis. A record backlog of nearly 80,000 cases stretches the justice system to its tipping point. Defendants are asked to wait years for their day in court. Victims wait longer for closure.
To aid this crisis, Justice Secretary David Lammy has now brought forward the Courts and Tribunals Bill — proposing to create new so-called “swift courts” in which a single judge, without a jury, would decide the verdict in cases carrying a sentence of three years or less. Thousands of trials a year would be affected. It is one of the most significant developments on the right to jury trial in modern times.
But the jury is not the cause of this crisis. It is an innocent bystander in a disaster entirely of the government’s own making. Rather than reaching for abolition — which is nothing more than a quick fix bound to cause irreparable damage to civil liberties and public trust in the law — policy makers must face an uncomfortable truth; this is an institutional catastrophe caused by neglect, underfunding, and mismanagement — and it demands reform.
Introduced to Parliament on 25 February 2026, the Courts and Tribunals Bill follows a review by former Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Leveson, who warned that the criminal courts were “on the brink of collapse.” Leveson himself proposed a more cautious model — an intermediate court in which a judge would sit with two lay magistrates. Lammy has gone further. His “swift courts” would remove magistrate participation entirely, leaving a judge to their own devices.
The government’s stated justification is efficiency. Lammy has argued that the justice system has “fallen behind the world it now serves” and that, without fundamental change, the backlog is projected to reach 100,000 by 2028. The suffering caused by delays is real; victims face years of uncertainty, and defendants are held on remand to be acquitted.
But the government’s own evidence is, for lack of a better turn of phrase, thin at best and practically non-existent at worst. Research by the Institute of Government found that judge-only trials would save less than 2% court time — even on the assumption that they are 20% faster than jury trials, which is itself described in the Leveson Review as “highly uncertain.” A letter signed by thousands of legal professionals (including former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir David Calvert-Smith) to Prime Minister Starmer sends a clear message. The people do not support the erosion of a deeply entrenched constitutional principle for negligible gain and with substantial risk.
Ironically, the biggest critic of Lammy’s proposal is David Lammy himself.
In June 2020, when the previous government was exploring the idea of suspending the jury during the pandemic, Lammy posted on social media:
He was right then. The question now is: what changed? The backlog has grown, yes, but the constitutional principle remains steadfast. A right that was “fundamental” in 2020 does not simply become expendable in 2026 merely because a queue has become longer.
Lammy is not alone in his change of heart. Starmer wrote in 1992:
“the right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual.”
It is to nobody’s surprise, then, that this bill has provoked significant backbench rebellion. Around 80 Labour MPs have threatened to vote against the Courts and Tribunals Bill, with MP Karl Turner declaring that removing the right to jury trial is not something Labour aligns with.
The right to be judged by jury is not a bureaucratic convenience that is afforded for enjoyment. It is a constitutional pillar traceable as far back as the Magna Carta in 1215 and embedded in the very essence of English common law. For centuries, the principle that the state does not get to determine guilt has been made clear. That decision belongs to the people.
The jury is the only democratic body in the entire judiciary. Judges are appointed, magistrates are trained and prosecutors employed, jurors answer to nobody. They bring with them the values and experience of the modern community. When they make a decision, it is not the law speaking — it is society.
This matters. Juries have- throughout history- acted as a frontier against unjust laws and overreaching prosecutions. The practice of jury nullification — where a jury can acquit in silent protest of the law — has played a role in everything from preventing enforcement of oppressive statutes to the protection of press freedom. A system without juries is therefore a system without safety.
There is also the question of diversity. Lammy, in 2017, found that juries “act as a filter for prejudice.” Critics of this bill share similar concerns; defendants from disadvantaged or ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to face a judge who does not share their values or community.
The most common argument against jury trials is that they are slow and expensive, and that the backlog overwhelming the system is at least partially a consequence of the resources spent on running jury proceedings. This argument does not withstand scrutiny.
The Crown Court backlog stood at an unbelievable 79,619 outstanding cases as of September 2025, a figure almost double that in March 2024. However, the causes for this surge is not because of the jury.
The most damning evidence comes from what has happened to court productivity itself. Analysis by the Institute for Government reveals that courts are not spending more time on jury proceedings; rather, the opposite is true.
None of this is to say the current jury system is without flaw. It has genuine weaknesses that deserve serious attention.
Fraud cases have the highest proportion of remaining open for over a year, at 39%. These are often cases of extraordinary technical complexity, multi-year financial schemes, cybercrime, and sophisticated money-laundering operations. Cases that can overwhelm even the most diligent juror. The answer here is not to remove the jury, but to change its composition. Specialist juror panels — drawn from pools with relevant financial or technical expertise — or hybrid panels pairing lay jurors with independent legal assessors, could deliver both democratic legitimacy and genuine comprehension.
The rise of social media has created a new category of risk: jurors conducting their own research online, coming across material, or discussing active cases on private messaging platforms. These are real issues that lead to costly retrials. However, the solution is reform, not abolition. Stronger juror education at the beginning of trials, more robust contempt enforcement, and greater judicial powers to monitor and sanction juror misconduct would address these risks directly.
In serious organised crime trials, juror intimidation remains a genuine, documented problem. Northern Ireland’s experience with Diplock courts — judge-only trials introduced in the 1970s for terrorism cases — offers a cautionary tale here. While they served an emergency purpose, they were widely regarded as damaging to public trust. Enhanced juror protection, anonymity provisions, and secure deliberation facilities offer a proportionate response.
One legitimate criticism of the jury system is its opacity. Juries do not explain their verdicts, making it difficult for appellate courts to identify errors and for the public to understand the basis of high-profile acquittals. Introducing structured verdict forms could improve accountability without undermining independence. Scotland’s system of 15 jurors deciding by simple majority is another model worth examining to reduce inconclusive juries and retrials.
These reforms are a separate debate in their own right, but they show that meaningful improvement can be made through refinement of the current system, not a complete eradication of the jury.
Beyond the practical arguments, there is a principle at stake that transcends efficiency and resources. The jury is the citizens’ last line of defence against the power of the state. It is the mechanism by which ordinary people — like you and I, not political appointees — get to say what justice looks like.
Over 90% of criminal cases in England and Wales are already decided without juries, in magistrates’ courts. Jury trial is already reserved for the most serious offences, those where liberty is most at stake and where the weight of community judgment matters most. Lammy’s “swift courts” would take that further, reserving juries for only the gravest crimes.
Stella Creasy, a Labour MP, pointed out in the Commons that jury trials already represent just 3% of all criminal proceedings. Curtailing them further cannot, by any honest accounting, make a serious dent in a backlog built on decades of underinvestment.
The Institute for Government has concluded that productivity improvements would deliver faster gains than any restriction on jury rights. Even Sir Brian Leveson, whose review Lammy cites as his authority, proposed something more modest than what the bill contains.
Britain’s courts need investment, leadership and reform. They do not need to sacrifice one of the oldest civil liberties in the common law world on the altar of administrative convenience.