Courts and Tribunals Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Edward Leigh

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me, but Madam Deputy Speaker wants me to proceed.

The backlog did not arise because juries exist; it arose because the system itself has been placed under strain for many years. Opposition Members, like others, have a responsibility here. If the courts are struggling, the answer is to repair the system rather than weaken the principle. Many sensible proposals have been suggested, such as restoring bigger and longer court sitting patterns, opening additional courtrooms, and treating the backlog as a genuine national crisis that requires urgent resources.

Many people have pointed out the flaws in the Lord Chancellor’s plan. Several senior legal figures have written to The Times explaining that the proposals are “unworkable”. Perhaps there is one possible compromise: to at least preserve the absolute right of those of good character to a jury trial. If a person of good character—perhaps a Member of Parliament—is accused of something such as shoplifting, which would be quite a minor case, it can have a devastating impact on their career and life.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

The other logical absurdity is that, under the Government’s proposed reforms, somebody with a previous conviction may well go above the three-year threshold, so those who have a string of previous convictions will get a right to jury trial, but a person of good character will not.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is a very fair point.

I ask Members to look to their conscience. If they, a Member of Parliament—a person of good character—were accused of shoplifting, what would they choose? They would choose trial by jury, would they not? They would not choose to be tried by a magistrate. The task before us is to solve this practical problem without undermining our constitutional safeguards. The danger that we face is the temptation to sacrifice a long-standing liberty for the sake of short-term administrative convenience.

The Lord Chancellor is a friend of mine and a good man. He is not a villain; he approaches things with the best of intentions—I say that without doubt. The problem is that we may not always have individuals as good natured and well intentioned as him. We accept that he is genuinely trying to solve a problem, but I fear that he is doing it with the wrong mindset. Constitutional safeguards are not designed for moments when power is exercised by good men; they exist precisely because future holders of power may not always be so wise or so restrained. We have become so used to our state of freedom that we are in danger of imagining that it is the natural state of mankind. History teaches us that it is not. We have reached our advanced state of structured freedom, responsible government and parliamentary democracy through centuries of slow, organic growth. They grew through the common law, through Magna Carta, through Parliament and through the principle that the community—the people—participate in justice.