Courts and Tribunals Bill

Ayoub Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

Does the shadow Minister agree that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done? One of the key cornerstones of getting justice is being tried by one’s peers, and giving that to a defendant builds confidence in a jury system.

[Dr Mullan]

The hon. Gentleman is right. As I pointed out at the start, and as Labour Members have highlighted, it is not just people concerned about defendants who have raised concerns about the proposals; victims have as well. Victims groups wrote an extensive letter to the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, asking them to think twice about the erosion of jury trials. Any criticism that Members make of me will, I am afraid, also have to be levelled at the victims who do not agree with them. Victims are not all of one voice on this issue, and we should respect that, instead of assuming that every victim agrees with Labour Members, which they do not.

The erosions under the proposals are significant. This Government, in which trust is so low, also seek for themselves an extraordinary power to do what they set out to do in clause 3 through the back door, via clause 4, in which they are not only introducing judge-only trials in the Crown court for what they describe as lengthy and complex cases, but giving themselves the power to add to the list of eligible cases through order alone, bypassing the fullest scrutiny of Parliament. That is quite extraordinary from a Government who, when in opposition, concerned themselves greatly with the proper use of delegated legislation.

The Opposition remain as concerned as everybody else about the Crown court backlog. We know that victims and innocent defendants are suffering as a result of it, but so much of the Bill will not help, and may make matters worse. That is the reality. I notice that the Minister was happy to repeatedly say in Committee that opposing the measures does not suggest not having concern for victims; I hope that she sticks to that line during the rest of the debate, and I would encourage all of her colleagues to listen to the words that she said. Being concerned about the erosion of jury trial rights does not in any way mean that we do not care about victims, and I hope that the Minister repeats that later.

I was able to visit the Supreme Court yesterday, and I encourage any Members mulling this over to head to the exhibition space and take a look at the replica of Magna Carta. They should read for themselves the words illuminated on the wall: at its heart, the highest and best form of justice is justice delivered by your peers. That brings me to the position of Labour Members. Prior to this partial U-turn, dozens of Labour Back Benchers, including 37 MPs who signed a public letter, expressed deep opposition to the Bill’s proposals to curtail jury trials. They rightly described the stripping of jury rights as “madness” that

“will cause more problems than it solves”.

Labour Members spoke forcefully about the unique value of the jury, yet today, following the removal of just one clause—just one element of this damaging Bill—the Government expect those same Members to walk through the Lobby in support of it. I ask those Members: what has actually changed? Clause 1 still abolishes the right of an ordinary citizen to elect for jury trial. Clause 6 still pushes serious cases into summary courts, where backlogs are already surging, and clause 7 still cuts off automatic appeals. If removing the right to elect a jury trial in either-way cases was wrong before, it remains wrong today. Dropping one element of a bad package does not make the remaining elements good law.

In Committee, Opposition Members and Labour Back Benchers put forward a series of modest, constructive amendments designed to insert basic safeguards into the Bill, and the Government rejected every single one. We tabled amendments to preserve a natural justice exception, ensuring that where a defendant could demonstrate that a summary-only trial would result in a clear breach of natural justice, a jury trial would remain available. The Ministers defeated those amendments. We pressed the Government on the severe misalignment in legal aid—a defendant in a Crown court benefits from higher legal aid eligibility thresholds—but the Government rejected those amendments. Everything we sought to do to protect natural justice and lessen the impact of the Bill was blocked.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes a very good point—of course it will. When a judge is required to give reasons, counsel for the by-then appellant is poring over the judge’s statement, looking at every single line. Clever people such as the very eminent King’s counsel, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox), will be instructed to pore over the judgments in those cases, and the likelihood of an appeal will increase. The beauty of a jury trial is that the men and women—the ordinary citizens who are picked at random and summoned to court to hear a trial as a member of a jury—go home at the end of the case and very rarely, and certainly not publicly, speak about the case again. There is no requirement to give reasons in that scenario.

[Ayoub Khan]

On appeals, if elected trials do not happen and cases are dealt with summarily, there is a good prospect that those appeals will also find their way into the Crown court. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that would not allay the concerns that the Government want to address?

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

When I first put on my barrister’s robes and horse hair wig nearly 20 years ago, victims and defendants were not commonly waiting years for trial, victims of rape and serious sexual assault were not having their cases adjourned at the last minute multiple times, and it was not common to see significant numbers of defendants in the magistrates courts facing custodial sentences without lawyers and representing themselves.

Years of austerity, court closures, pandemic pressures, court sitting day limits and increasingly complex evidence have driven the Crown court backlog to 80,000 cases. Removing the limits on court sitting days has not been enough. The backlog is still going up and our criminal justice system remains in crisis. I welcome the fact that this Bill is now back before the House, as further action is needed. I thank the Government for responding last week to the Justice Committee’s June report on the Bill. I welcome Government amendment 3, which directly answers the concerns raised by the Committee and Members across this House regarding the proposed Crown court bench division, where a judge, without a jury, would have decided cases.

The Committee raised a number of other concerns. I will focus on three: the impact of magistrates courts delays, how the question of whether cases stay with the magistrates court or go to the Crown court will be determined, and the impact of the number of people representing themselves in our criminal courts, which is already too high. In order for the backlog in the Crown court to come down in this Parliament, as the Government intend, the reforms are to be brought forward sooner. I want to see rapid action, but we cannot ignore the storm that is gathering in our magistrates courts.

Clause 6 doubles magistrates’ sentencing powers to up to 24 months’ custody, shifting significant caseloads out of the Crown court, but the backlogs in our magistrates courts are already climbing month on month. Even without these reforms, the workload in magistrates courts over the last three years has increased by 65%. The Committee made it clear that without “significant additional support”, our local courts will not be able to cope.

It is positive that the Government are confident that they are on track to meet their target of 21,000 magistrates, taking numbers back to where they were in 2014, and I welcome additional recruitment of trainee legal advisers and district judges. But will that be enough? Will it happen fast enough? Do we even have enough physical courts to cope with demand, when 165 magistrates courts were closed between 2010 and 2020.

[Ayoub Khan]

Is there not another problem? Even if we had capacity at the magistrates courts, where trials would be taken away from the Crown courts, is not the elephant in the room that we do not have enough lawyers?

[Jess Phillips]

There’s loads around here!