King’s Speech

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, for his brilliant valedictory speech. He will be greatly missed, both for the warmth of his company and for his combination of erudition and deep understanding, in contributions not only here but to our national debate. He warns us to take care to protect and nourish our constitution—and how right he is.

We also enjoyed two excellent maiden speeches: the philosophical approach of the noble Lord, Lord Case, to the working of our constitution, and the clear commitment to fairness and justice of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, who also reminded us that the sun rises first over Suffolk. Both demonstrated the qualities they will each bring to our future debates.

The Hillsborough law Bill has been a long time coming, but we fully support it. At last, public officials will have a specific duty to tell the truth about mistakes made, unchecked faults and tragedies suffered in consequence. The offences of misleading the public and misconduct in public office should reinforce accountability and reduce the culture of cover-up and self-exculpation that is its very opposite. The increase in legal aid for inquests should also help level the playing field between bereaved families and those allegedly responsible for their loss. We support the principles of the national security Bill and the tackling state threats Bill, though we will always take care to protect individual liberties.

Central to today’s debate has been the emphatic recognition of the scourge, even in our still overwhelmingly tolerant and inclusive country, of widespread antisemitism, so powerfully expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and echoed by the noble Lords, Lord Reid and Lord Pickles, and very many others. The noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, also reminded us of the appalling prevalence of anti-Muslim hostility. The proscription of the IRGC—long demanded by us but resisted in the Crime and Policing Act through three rounds of ping-pong, but now at last promised by the Government—will demonstrate our commitment. As the noble Lords, Lord Cryer, Lord Sherbourne and Lord Stevens of Birmingham, and others have said, the evidence of Iranian involvement in antisemitic attacks in the UK is overwhelming and now unchallengeable.

On SLAPPs, we will support the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on her Bill to restrict this abuse, and we urge the Government to support her too. We have long called for control of the bullying use of threatened or actual litigation to close down legitimate criticism. My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford previously introduced a Bill on SLAPPs.

We welcome the commitment to increased investment in criminal justice, but the proposed restrictions of jury trials are wholly out of kilter with that commitment. The Government claim that the right to jury trial would be only minimally affected. Certainly, 90% of criminal trials are heard by magistrates, including nearly all motoring offences. But the Government’s proposals are concerned with serious offences, however Ministers may try to underplay them. How can the Government justify denying citizens of unblemished record a jury trial for almost any offence of dishonesty? On what criterion is that based? It is based on an arbitrary assessment that a three-year sentence is likely.

As such, a seasoned criminal with a long criminal record is to be permitted a jury trial, while a person of good character—who stands to lose career, family, friends, self-esteem and mental health if convicted of theft—is not. What is the reason? It is because the seasoned criminal is at risk of three years plus, whereas the person of good character is not.

Judges differ. A hearing before a prosecution-minded judge is a world away from a hearing before a different, more sympathetic judge. These differences between judges cannot be eliminated in the essentially human world of judicial decision-making on guilt or innocence. Judges cannot leave their leave their differing classes, lifestyles and racial prejudices outside court, so in these proposals we have the perfect recipe for unfairness and widespread resentment.

The virtue of jury trial is precisely that human differences are largely ironed out by the collective decision-making of a jury of 12 in the privacy of the jury room. Rightly, we never get to know how jury decisions are reached, but we do know that both criminal lawyers and the public at large respect and trust the jury process far more than they do the individual decisions of judges.

Juries are an essentially democratic institution, bringing lay decision-making into our justice system—a point powerfully made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Chakrabarti, and others. Public trust in juries is further enhanced by the racial and gender diversity of juries, and these proposals represent the most extraordinary about-turn by David Lammy, who, in his 2017 review, described juries as a major protection of defendants against racial disadvantage.

The Government rely on the need to reduce the backlogs and waiting times for trials caused by years of underresourcing by previous Governments. Certainly, we must radically cut the backlogs and waiting times to trial. The delays are intolerable, but attacking the system as a response is a desperate counsel of despair. In reality, there is no convincing evidence that these restrictions would indeed reduce waiting times. The Criminal Bar Association has demonstrated that the Government’s impact assessment overstates the cuts in waiting times by a factor of two. The Institute for Government assessed the reduction to be achieved as negligible. Furthermore, no one has been able to cost the extra time to be needed by judges to write reasoned judgments for every verdict, and no one has assessed the likely number of extra appeals from disputed judicial convictions or the extra time they would involve.

We have done so little to tackle the waiting lists by other, more sensible means. We have had an artificial cap on sitting days. That is now thankfully abandoned. As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, pointed out, that step is already reducing waiting times. Then successive Governments have allowed the court estate to fall into dreadful disrepair, leaving courts unusable and shuttered. We have failed properly to resource sufficient judges or lawyers of high quality to deal with cases efficiently. As Kirsty Brimelow KC, the Bar Council chair, trenchantly argues:

“Priority listing of cases comprising vulnerable witnesses is an approach that’s already been shown to reduce delays in those cases. There is growing evidence that the Crown court backlog is being brought down simply by the action of opening up closed court rooms”.


Then we have pre-trial systems that are inefficient and often paper-based when they should be digital. We regularly have cases adjourned and days wasted for lack of counsel to represent the parties because the work is paid too little to be viable. We still have the absurd position that defendants in custody are being brought to court late or not at all, causing lost court days. The combination of all these inefficiencies has brought judges’ average sitting times per day down from 3.8 hours to 3.2 hours since 2016-17. Restoring that to 3.8 hours, an increase of 18.75%, would massively outweigh any possible cut in waiting times from these proposals.

Furthermore, all these trials have to be paid for eventually, so the cost of accelerating trials is only deferred by delays, not avoided. The exception is that it is sadly true that some victims feel driven by despair to abandon cases because the waiting for trial is interminable, but that is clearly not an acceptable way of saving money.

The Liberal Democrats propose for courts to sit on two trials in a day, with different judges and juries in two sessions, for 3.5 hours or so in the morning and the same in the afternoon. The current sitting day of 4.5 hours or so is about the maximum length for witnesses’ and juries’ concentration, and lawyers’ preparation for the next day. With two sessions a day, juries would work half days, so jury service would be less of a burden. Court staff and buildings would be better used. About 50% more trials could be heard. The increase in immediate cost would be offset by savings later. Two-session days were successfully trialled during Covid and greatly increased the throughput of trials. So-called Maxwell hours—single-session, four-hour days—worked for the Maxwell fraud trial in the 1990s.

There is much else we can do. Some minor offences could be redesignated as summary-only, triable only by magistrates. Some complex fraud cases could possibly be tried by judge alone if the defendants consented, which in some cases they might. But there really is no argument for hacking away at the jewel in the crown of our criminal justice system in a fruitless exercise that will be profoundly damaging when there is so much else that could be done.