Jury Trials

John Grady Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes a series of important points. There is something very special about being judged by a group of one’s peers, and about the wisdom of ordinary members of the public coming together. Juries are basically the only opportunity for members of the public to participate in our criminal justice system. That is important and should be preserved. He is right to say that we need to get the courts sitting around the clock. This week alone, 241 sitting days have been missed because of closed courtrooms—241 in three days! Imagine what the figure is over the course of a year.

We must ensure that prisoners arrive at court on time. The present contract is not working properly, which leads to many trials collapsing or suffering unacceptable delays. We need to drastically improve court IT, ending the technical failures that waste hours of court time every week. As I said, we need to provide proper support for the criminal Bar. I welcome the Justice Secretary’s modest intervention the other day to ensure that there are enough advocates to prosecute and defend cases. Those are the bottlenecks that actually drive delays. Bottlenecks are a problem of resources and management, not an inevitable side effect of having citizens weigh evidence. Jury trials are not the problem. We must ensure that we get to the root of the challenge, not get rid of something that we have enjoyed for such a long time.

Let me mention the degree of opposition to the proposal, which my hon. Friends have rightly mentioned. It is important to note the broad opposition of the legal world, where alarm bells are ringing about the policy. The Law Society, which represents thousands of solicitors, calls it an “extreme measure” that goes too far and fundamentally changes how our justice system operates. Its president, Mark Evans, warns that the plan goes further than the recommendations of Sir Brian Leveson’s review of efficiency, and is not backed by evidence that it will solve the backlog. The Bar Council, which represents barristers, has been equally clear that it sees

“no basis for altering the structure of the court system”

in this way, and warns that limiting the right to a jury trial strikes at a core citizen’s right.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will, but then I must conclude my remarks, because many colleagues wish to speak.

[John Grady]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman might clarify one point on the Opposition’s position. In Scotland, there has never been a right for the accused to elect to have a jury trial. The prosecution decides whether a case will go to jury trial. Is the Opposition’s position that such a reform in England should be opposed?

[Robert Jenrick]

That is the subject of this debate, isn’t it? England and Wales have their own legal tradition, and Scotland has its own. Those of us who represent constituencies in England and Wales are here to defend our constitutional rights and settlement, and we will. It is up to those in Scotland to choose their path forward.

The hon. Gentleman’s point raises another important question: is this debate a technical, bureaucratic one about how to get the backlog down in the most expeditious way, or does he speak to an ideological view that jury trials are wrong or superfluous, and that ordinary people do not know what they are talking about and their views should be casually set aside? I do not know the answer to that question in respect of the hon. Gentleman, but some in our politics do take the latter view. They think that ordinary citizens cannot be trusted. As Baroness Helena Kennedy suggested, some in the Labour tradition take the view that led Tony Blair and Jack Straw to take the original decision. Clearly, that is not everyone in the Labour tradition, as we see today—it may be a very small minority—but that view is not one that we support.

We want ordinary people to continue to be at the heart of our criminal justice system. That is why we have brought forward the motion. This is an Opposition day debate, but opposition to this proposal is not restricted to those on the Conservative Benches, or to those in the other Opposition parties; it is found on both sides of this House and in the other place. It comes from the solicitors, barristers and judges who can speak out, and from those who cannot, when they speak privately at their kitchen table. It comes from ordinary citizens of our country, who want jury trials preserved—poll after poll shows that clearly.

We are talking about 800 years of legal tradition. Let us not toss it aside; let us defend it, because it matters, and then let us unite and find a way to fix the bureaucratic failures of the Ministry of Justice to ensure that we have swift justice. Justice delayed is justice denied; we all agree on that. We can do this without ruining a gift that this country has given the world, and a fundamental part of our constitution and our democracy. Vote for our motion to defend jury trials, and tomorrow let us work together to fix the court backlog.