Courts and Tribunals Bill

Karl Turner Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Mullan]

Lucky you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I take that point.

The schedule 1 powers that I have talked about are a significant Henry VIII power. Under proposed statutory instrument powers, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State will have the authority to add further categories of offences to schedule 1 by secondary legislation. I am not aware of any time before in this place when the Secretary of State could use secondary legislation to erode and remove the right to a jury trial from a particular defendant. That is completely unprecedented and indefensible.

The Conservatives do not merely criticise this bad package of legislation; we have repeatedly sought to put forward practical, evidence-based alternatives that tackle the delays without taking a sledgehammer to our constitutional rights. The Government must fix the operational failures that currently waste thousands of court hours every year. Last year, between 23% and 26% of Crown court trials were ineffective. Rather than stripping citizens of jury trial rights, the Minister should be focused instead on failures in prisoner transport, which result in hundreds of trials being derailed, simply because defendants are late to the dock.

The Government must keep all existing courtrooms open and fully funded, and must use new artificial intelligence tools for disclosure and listing, and they must expand live-link video participation. [Interruption.] Ministers on the Front Bench chunter that they are already doing that. If that is the case, why is the Crown court backlog going up? They are clearly not succeeding with the measures that they are bringing forward, and a number of things are getting worse.

We must improve case management and incentivise earlier case resolution, instead of forcing complex cases into the overburdened summary courts, where there are backlogs too. Extraordinarily, the Minister claimed that there was no backlog in the magistrates courts. I do not know how she decides what is or is not a backlog. Cases going up by 10% in one year is a backlog by any measure. I visited Liverpool Crown court, where the wait for trial is roughly half the length of the wait for trial in other parts of the country. The Government should replicate the proactive case management model successfully pioneered in courts like Liverpool, Preston and Cardiff, where active Crown Prosecution Service case ownership and early trial-readiness reviews have driven down backlogs.

Our sunset clause draws attention to the true motivations of this Government. If the Government sincerely feel that these measures are a necessity to bring the backlog down, as they have argued repeatedly to their Back Benchers, our clause is quite clear that when the backlog is down to the pre-covid average for a period of four quarters, these damaging, rights-eroding measures should be withdrawn. I do not expect that the Government will support that proposal today, because fundamentally they do not have the same faith that we do in the importance and value of a jury trial.

The Government’s partial U-turn demonstrates that sustained scrutiny can force a rethink, but a partial U-turn is not enough. The central flaws of the Bill remain: the abolition of the right to elect trial by jury, the risky expansion of summary jurisdiction, the restriction of appeal rights and the creation of secondary powers to expand juryless trials. We should not erode centuries of procedural safeguards to achieve marginal administrative speed gains. I urge hon. Members across the House, and especially those who have previously spoken out against these measures, to stand by their previous words, to stand by their principles, and to reject these remaining clauses tonight.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Ind)]

May I begin by welcoming the Justice Secretary to his place, and thank him for his engagement with me over recent weeks? More particularly, may I thank him for appointing Holly Lynch, the former Member of Parliament for Halifax, who apparently—goodness knows why—is still a big fan of me, despite the fact that I have opposed these policies in previous months?

Goodness me, a lot has changed since I last addressed the House on the Bill, and not just in the Bill itself. I welcome the removal of clause 3, which introduced the idea of the Crown court bench division, but let us not pretend that its removal is because of rebels, or opposition from across the House, the Bar Council, the Criminal Bar Association and the Law Society—or indeed, I am told, from the Lady Chief Justice herself. The reality is that the CCBD was completely, unbelievably unworkable, as Members from across the House warned the Government. It would not—could not—have worked. It will never work.

I welcome the fact that the Government have done the right thing—they have listened to those of us who were bitterly opposed to the idea of the CCBD—but I regret to say that I cannot support the Bill today, in its current form. The backlog in the magistrates court is 380,000 cases and rising. The backlog in the Crown court, as I understand it, is 80,000, and it is fairly static; the number is probably falling. If we do away with the right to elect, the backlog will be transferred from the Crown court. The Government estimate that 25,000 fewer cases will be heard in the Crown court, and 5,500 trials will be moved from the Crown court to be heard at summary trial in the magistrates court. Well, that just removes a problem from the Crown court and transfers it to the magistrates court. I do not care what we call it, be it a backlog or something different; however the Government want to describe it, there are 380,000 cases and rising in the magistrates court. That is 380,000 criminal cases, in which complainants are waiting for an outcome—for their trial to be concluded.

I agree that a trial in the magistrates court is a lot quicker than a trial in the Crown court. Of course it is—it is swift, summary justice. But that is why we need to be very cautious about what category of case is heard before a bench of lay magistrates in the magistrates courts. That matters, because the rights and liberty of the accused are at stake. That is why we limit magistrates’ power on sentencing in the system in England and Wales. I cannot support clauses 1 and 2.

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[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about complex and lengthy trials. Has he considered the effect on the Court of Appeal of making those types of trial judge-only? If I have correctly understood the Government’s proposals, they wish to require a judge to give reasons for conviction. Juries need give no reasons for conviction. Does he think that that will change the rate and frequency of appeals to the Court of Appeal in such cases?

[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?

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[Karl Turner]

I agree completely, and the hon. Gentleman makes the point very strongly indeed.

Clause 6 is on magistrates’ sentencing powers. I cannot support the idea of magistrates having powers to give sentences of between 18 and 24 months without a credible plan to address the dire, desperate need to recruit magistrates, legal advisers, court staff and lawyers. That risks just transferring the pressure rather than solving the backlog. That is the reality of what this Bill will do.

That brings me to the anomaly in the Bill. As currently drafted, it presents a fairly obvious problem: a defendant of good character, with no previous convictions and who has never been arrested, interviewed, charged, prosecuted or convicted of a criminal offence is likely, by virtue of the sentencing guidelines on an either-way offence, to be tried in front of a magistrates court, whereas a defendant with numerous previous convictions, by virtue of the fact that under the guidelines that offending behaviour exceeds the three-year threshold, gets the benefit of a Crown court trial.

Let us picture the scenario: a section 47 offence of actual bodily harm is triable either way. This is a serious assault in a domestic scenario. Defendant A has no previous convictions and has never been convicted by a criminal court—

[Jess Phillips]

Just because a domestic abuser has no prior convictions, it does not mean he does not have priors. It does not mean he has good character.

[Karl Turner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. She is absolutely right, of course. In my experience, offenders who appear in incredibly serious cases of violence in domestic scenarios have often never had previous convictions.

Let us think about the fairness of this scenario. Defendant A, who has never been convicted of a criminal offence, is charged with a section 47 ABH and appears in a summary trial. It is a very serious assault, an ABH. Defendant B, who has had numerous convictions over his adult life—let us be honest, it is mainly men who commit domestic assaults; that is the truth of it—gets the benefit of a trial in front of a jury. How is that possibly—[Interruption.] Well, it is a benefit. I am hearing “Why is it a benefit?”

[Jess Phillips]

A longer sentence is the benefit.

[Karl Turner]

I am hearing comments from a sedentary position. I have an awful lot of time for my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), I truly have—she is a mate of mine, as it happens—but there is a benefit to a jury trial.

The reality is that when a defendant appears in a summary trial before a bench of lay magistrates or a district judge, it is swift, summary justice. The evidence is heard, but it is not heard and presented in the same way as it is in a Crown court. That is just the truth. A Crown court trial in that scenario would last four or five days, and potentially into a second week. There is an opportunity to call defence evidence. Legal aid is available for experts. There is the potential for reports by the defence and the prosecution. It is about equality before the law. That is the reality of the scenario, and I cannot believe that this consequence is intended by this Labour Government. That is why I say that I cannot possibly support clause 6.

[Emily Darlington]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the Rape Crisis report that says that juries bring misconceptions and bias into the system and are less likely to convict? I am sure he is not talking about that being the benefit, is he?

[Karl Turner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the intervention. I will be honest: I did not know about the report, but I am keen to have a look.

[Dr Mullan]

As I said in my opening speech, a number of women’s victims rights groups were the leading critics of getting rid of jury trials. We cannot make out that victims have a singular view on this and that they are happy with it. There are different opinions among victims groups, and many of them agree with the hon. Gentleman.

[Jess Phillips]

None of them agree with you about the presumption of contact.

[Karl Turner]

Well, I am not going to get into the whys and wherefores of this particular juncture of the debate.

There is an easy fix for the scenario that I have described. My amendment 47 states that where a defendant has no previous convictions and the court decides that the case is suitable for summary trial, that defendant should be entitled to elect to have their trial in the Crown court. I do not think that the numbers will be very big. It is probably impossible for the Ministry of Justice to do modelling. In the 16 years that I have been a Member of this House and have been involved in debating criminal justice issues, I have rarely seen MOJ modelling that has been anywhere near accurate. However, even if it could do the modelling—I suspect it cannot, because that data is not kept—the numbers would be tiny. Why? Because only 0.4% of all convictions in the magistrates court are appealed.

However, in 41% of that 0.4% of cases—it is a tiny number—the conviction is overturned in the Crown court, because there has been a wrong decision. The Bar Council has produced more up-to-date data, which suggests that that 41% has now gone up to 56%. More than half the cases that are appealed from the magistrates to the Crown court for a rehearing end up with a defendant who was convicted in the magistrates court being acquitted in the Crown court. Why do I say that there is a benefit to a Crown court hearing? It speaks for itself.

What could the Government do instead? There is plenty that they could do. They could implement the relevant recommendations of the Leveson review. They could improve co-ordination between the police, the CPS and the courts to progress and identify unnecessary prosecutions earlier. It happens to be a fact that prosecutions sometimes end because the CPS—the Crown—throws in the towel. There is lots to welcome in the Bill, and I do welcome it, but there is too much in it for me to support it at this time.

Finally, I want to say a few words of gratitude. I thank the Prime Minister, because from the very outset of my opposition to the worst excesses of the Bill, he was supporting me in the background. Similarly, Lord Sadiq Khan was there texting me, encouraging me and supporting me when it mattered. My biggest thank you of all is reserved for my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for her bravery in standing up, waiving her anonymity and explaining her personal situation in the criminal justice system, in the face of all the pressure that was being exerted on Members who had the audacity to say that these measures were not suitable for a Labour Government to be implementing. We suffered the pressure exerted on us, and my hon. Friend showed real bravery and determination. For that, I will forever respect her.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I am a member of the Bar of England and Wales, and my wife is an employment judge. Notwithstanding some noble and commendable elements, particularly in clauses 12 to 17, in totality, I am afraid that this is a bad Bill. It was a bad Bill when it came before the House on Second Reading; it was a bad Bill when it left Committee; and without significant refinement, it will be a bad piece of law, should it come on to the statute books.

This is not the Lord Chancellor’s legislation; he inherited it from his predecessor. It is right to welcome his efforts on the amendment that recognises that clause 3 is unsustainable; it would be churlish not to. He has listened to the legal profession, to this House, and most importantly, to the public, who have raised serious and significant concerns. But I am afraid that the measures do not go far enough. If this Bill is the answer, then the exam question is fundamentally wrong. Nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in clause 6. That is why I am very supportive of amendment 7 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), which seeks to remove clause 6.

The clause, as we have heard, merely moves the problem from one part of the system to another. It pushes, on a conservative basis, some 25,000 cases into the magistrates court. About 5,500 of those are likely to be trials—and not necessarily straightforward trials; they may take more than a day or two to be heard. We are asking an under-resourced and ill equipped magistrates court to deal with them. That is not the way to deal with the magistrates court backlog, which, in the last year, increased by more than 9.5%.

[Karl Turner]

I think I am right in saying that a lay magistrate is required to sit 15 days a year. Very often, magistrates sit for a day at a time; they may do a day every other week. The scenario that the Government are presenting expects a lay magistrate to sit for two or three days in a row, and potentially into a second week. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is unsustainable?

[Dr Shastri-Hurst]

The hon. Gentleman, as always, has his finger on the pulse on these issues. The Government’s proposals would narrow the pool of magistrates able to deal with these cases, by virtue of the time commitments that would be foisted on them.

I want to spend a little bit of time on clause 4, which deals with complex and lengthy cases. In essence, through new schedule 3ZA to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the clause confines complex and lengthy cases to fraud or fraud-aligned cases. However, importantly, there is a provision that the Secretary of State can increase the number of offences captured in this provision. The danger is that there will be a slow accretion of such offences. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that misconduct in public office could be added to that list. The provision fails to recognise the very important work done by Jonathan Fisher KC in his independent review. He pointed out that these cases are not held up because of a jury; under the Bill, they would be delayed, because a judge would have to weigh up the evidence, and reach and write up a judgment. The provision also fundamentally undermines the point that facts of dishonesty—the offences in the schedule are offences around dishonesty—are matters for judgment by the ordinary citizen. Removing the jury element risks the erosion of civic ownership of these cases by the criminal justice system, and the criminal justice system’s engagement with them.

The provision would also have a chilling effect, in that the powerful narrative can be developed that these cases are being heard behind closed doors. This stems from a single case from 2005, the Jubilee line case. When the case was reviewed, the very sensible conclusion was reached that the issue came down to poor strategy by the CPS in processing the case; the issue was not jury trials themselves. Amendment 4 from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle is therefore eminently sensible.

If the House is not with me on that, there is an alternative. Amendment 52 by the shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), seeks to limit the scope of this provision to trials where all the offences that a defendant is charged with are captured by new schedule 3ZA. That seems eminently sensible in the circumstances.

I want to mention the rule of law. If the rule of law is to be taken into account, we must have an impartial system of adjudication. That means having a fair hearing, which in turn means having the ability to challenge. Therefore, amendment 54 must be right. It must be right that in complex or lengthy cases, a defendant has an opportunity to challenge the decision that the case will be heard by a judge sitting alone.

I want to spend a few moments on new clause 25. When this Bill was brought before the House, the narrative that we heard from Government repeatedly was that it was being introduced so that we could deal with a backlog in the Crown court. It appears from the Minister’s remarks—she knows that I have enormous respect for her—that it is more of an ideological argument. The question today is whether hon. Members want to do this to deal with a backlog—a specific problem—in which case a sunset clause would be eminently sensible, or whether they are making an ideological argument, which I think is much more chilling on our society.