Courts and Tribunals Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, and a pleasure to see my noble and learned friend Lord Leveson in his richly deserved place. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Stace on a humble, humane and incredibly promising maiden speech. I declare interests as a council member of the cross-party law reform charity Justice and as a member of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, where the spirit of the late and learned Lord Judge is always in the room.

I thank Justice for expressing so well, and the new Prime Minister for listening to, profound and widespread concerns about the earlier version of this Bill. The most obvious reason for the current crisis in our criminal justice system is years of savage cuts—bipartisan cuts by politicians who were quick to compete in law and order rhetoric, legislation being cheap and talk even cheaper, but they rendered tough words hollow by chronic underinvestment. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, made the point about “what if 30% of the doctors were off”. Attempting to speed up justice by a dilution of due process is oxymoronic indeed.

I join the Bar Council in welcoming, among other innovations, the Government’s pledge to establish specialist rape and sexual offences courts as a means of achieving swifter and better justice without dispensing with jury trials.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about parental responsibility. I note the expert testimony from the group Rights of Women on the confidence that women caught up in the system place in juries. Its short briefing gives lie to any zero-sum game between victims and defendants, and I hope we might bear that in mind.

I will explain why I think jury trials are so important in serious cases. First, the democratic effect, referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, of trial by one’s peers—I do not mean addressing your Lordships’ House; sometimes that is a trial, but not always—is a crucial participatory and legitimising factor of our system and society. Can we say it goes back about 100 years? Will that work, or will I be called out by the scholars of Middle Ages history on the Conservative Benches? Let us say about 100 years. Without jury trials in difficult and polarised times, it will feel to many that one class sits in permanent judgment over others—that does not mean that I am with my new noble friend’s mother in reading the Morning Star. By contrast, how wonderful that lay people may not only participate in democracy but play such a crucial part in delivering the rule of law on which that democracy is built. The statistics on women and people of colour having more confidence in juries add another crucial dimension to this.

Secondly, juries protect our judiciary from the opprobrium, sadly often stoked in both old and new media, that would surely come with high-profile acquittals in particular. The “enemies of the people”-type jibe and consequential threats to our precious referees would be only compounded in the context of findings related to criminal guilt or the lack thereof.

Thirdly, for me at least, perhaps just as importantly, juries provide a priceless final safety valve against oppressive laws and prosecutions. Some might find such safeguards irritating, but I for one think it important that there is the possibility of acquittal in a whistleblowing case involving official secrets or a protest case involving disproportionate policing contrary to the conscience of ordinary citizens. This is not about the Government, authorities and statute book just of today but over the years, and crucially, about how things might be if our politics were to take an authoritarian turn. Judges and magistrates would find it difficult or impossible to acquit in the face of tightly drawn statutes, regardless of their consciences.

I maintain residual concerns about the dilutions to the right to jury trial that continue in the Bill: the removal of the right to elect in “either way” offences; the increased or likely increased sentencing powers for magistrates; the removal of the right to appeal from magistrates; the restriction of jury trial in complex and lengthy cases, which may be extremely serious for the accused, and the building of the slippery slope towards every case involving computer, DNA or other technical or forensic evidence, especially via secondary legislation. I do not need to invoke dictators of this century or previous centuries —I hope noble Lords will understand the point.

Parliament is meant to be the least imperfect means of representing the people in the context of legislation and administration; how bizarre if it were complicit in removing their vital role in the adjudication of serious criminal liability. Being an internationalist and European in the context of human rights should not come with a callous disregard for an ancient homegrown right cherished by our people and admired across the world.

I look forward to our further deliberations and remind my noble friends in government that to listen is a dynamic and a continuous verb.