Courts and Tribunals Bill

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

May I begin by paying a huge tribute to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for her testimony to the House today? It was a privilege to be here to hear it, and it will last long in the memory.

I do not have a huge amount of experience of jury trials; in fact, what I have experience of is the antithesis. When we were training to go to Northern Ireland in 1992, the IRA was wont to put us on the horns of a dilemma, in terms of whether we could open fire or not. We used to do cine ranges, and they would pause the action. I remember saying to my trainer, “Can I fire?” He said to me, “That is a very difficult situation, sir. That is when you remind yourself that it is better to be tried by 12 men than to be carried by six.” It was quite chilling, particularly given that two of my guardsmen were involved in a judgmental shooting a few months later. It turned out that you do not get tried by 12 men; you get tried by one. Those guardsmen were convicted of murder and sent away for life, so I have seen this issue from the other side.

There has been something of a consensus in today’s debate that justice delayed is justice denied, and that the backlog needs to be reduced. I do not think that there is a consensus on whether halving the number of cases that go to jury trial, and removing from thousands of victims and defendants the right to jury trial, will actually reduce the backlog in the way that the Deputy Prime Minister suggested.

In the absence of my experience of jury trials, I want to spend some time outlining the concerns of a constituent who wrote to me. His name is Sir Ivan Lawrence KC, and he is a former Member of Parliament. He says:

“After 63 years conducting jury trials at the criminal bar, sitting as a Recorder, speaking to countless ex-jurors, and discussing with lawyers in other countries their jury systems, I can confidently say that, despite the waste of jurors’ time that often occurs, our system contributes to justice in almost certainly the fairest and most efficient way.

The great point about juries is that ordinary people trust the twelve members to spread their judgment and to use ordinary common sense. Those who have been accused of dishonesty, however small, or of violence, however petty, could have decent lives totally ruined, if common sense is replaced by the strictest application of the law which may be required of judges.

Jury trial is not merely an important and traditional human right, and a clear form of democracy. Juries are, like our judges, totally independent. Any wrongs that may occur are redressed by retrials or appeals to higher courts. Those accused of crimes are more likely to turn up for their trials and, when they do, are less likely to need handcuffs, leg-irons, or expensive incarceration.”

I have listened to Sir Ivan Lawrence, and I am reminded of my grandmother’s words: an ounce of experience is worth a tonne of enthusiasm.