Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)Department Debates - View all Lindsay Hoyle's debates with the Ministry of Justice
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Robert Jenrick
While this Government lurch from one outrage to another, yesterday the Chancellor shredded her promises and dropped a £26 billion tax bomb on working Britain. Meanwhile, we learned that the Justice Secretary is plotting to discard centuries of jury trials without so much as a by-your-leave—and where is the Justice Secretary to answer for this? Do we need to send out a search party to Saville Row in case he has gone suit shopping again this morning? Or perhaps he could not face up to the embarrassment that he is now destroying the very principles he once championed.
Jury trials are
“fundamental to the justice system…fundamental to our democracy. We must protect them.”
Those are not my words, but those of the Justice Secretary himself. This time, he was right: there is wisdom in 12 ordinary citizens pooling their collective experiences of the world. Yet, now that he is in government, he is doing the complete opposite. He blames the court backlog, but if the courtrooms standing empty this year were used, the backlog would be down by 5,000 to 10,000 cases. He pleads poverty on law and order, but yesterday the Chancellor came here and found £16 billion more to spend on benefits.
The truth is that the Labour party just does not think that ordinary people are up to it. It does not trust them with these decisions. Give away the Chagos islands, shackle us to the European convention on human rights, scrap jury trials—all because lawyers know best. And when the Justice Secretary is summoned here to the people’s House, what does he do? He cowers away. Well, the people who make up juries—the British people—will not wear it any more.
I have one simple question for the Minister he sent in his stead. Will she protect what is fundamental to our democracy, or will she stand by as the Justice Secretary casually casts aside centuries of English liberty?
Sarah Sackman
How extraordinary, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman claims to care about the rule of law; he claims to care about ancient legal traditions. This is the same shadow Justice Secretary who denigrates our independent judges and our legal community standing up for rights. I have already said it, and I will say it again: the right to a jury trial for our most serious cases will remain a fundamental part of our British legal tradition.
Since he is so fond of quoting our ancient principles and quoting Magna Carta, let me remind him of what is our constitutional right. Magna Carta states:
“to no one will we…delay right or justice.”
The right to a swift and prompt trial is a fundamental ingredient of fairness. When we have the crisis we inherited from the Conservative party, with a backlog now of some 80,000 cases—and behind each and every one of those cases is an actual victim and somebody accused of a crime—in the current system, we are denying a fair trial. When victims and witnesses pull out of the process, as is increasingly happening, that denies fairness.
I say this while wearing this pin, which shows that we stand in 16 days of activism against violence against women and girls: a woman reporting a rape today in London will be told that her trial may not come on until 2029-30. That is not justice at all, and it is a consequence of allowing the Crown court backlog to spiral out of control while doing nothing and offering not a single answer. That is not upholding the fundamental British constitutional right to a fair trial; it is exactly the opposite.
I for one, certainly, and as part of this Government, am not prepared to sit idly by. That is why we have gripped the crisis, making record investment in sitting days, extending magistrates court sentencing powers, investing in legal aid and asking one of our finest jurists, Brian Leveson, to conduct an independent review to provide us with a blueprint for how we get out of this mess. The Conservative party likes to call itself the party of tradition and the party of law and order, yet it presided over a justice system in which the British public can no longer have confidence.
I am afraid that I am not prepared to let victims down. This Labour Government are finally putting victims first. That is why we will carefully consider Sir Brian’s recommendations. It is why we will undertake to implement his blueprint, which takes as its fundamental premise this: the system is broken. There is no one in this House, no one in the community that represents victims and no one in the legal community—no judge, no one operating and working hard in the system to keep it going—who thinks that the system is not broken. We have to fix it.
Sir Brian Leveson tells us that investment alone will not fix it. We need investment coupled with structural reform and modernisation. That is exactly the blueprint that this Government will bring forward, because, as I said, we believe in the right to a fair trial, we believe in British justice and, unlike the Conservative party, we will deliver swifter justice for victims.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
The Minister is right that we cannot go on as we are with 80,000-plus cases in the backlog and growing, and four-year delays in serious cases. She is also right that there is nothing sacred about jury trial for any particular level of offence. But if the Lord Chancellor is thinking of going beyond Sir Brian Leveson’s proposals, he will need to produce some clear evidence as to why that is necessary and why that does not offend our system of justice, of which we are all still very proud. That is not only about more serious offences; if the leak is to be believed, it is also about extending magistrate courts’ powers beyond the 12 months, which they have only just gone up to, and a massive extension of judge-only trials. I appreciate that the Minister might not be able to answer all those questions today, but when will we hear those answers and get the response to Sir Brian’s report?
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
The leaked memo from the Ministry of Justice, which reveals plans to rip up our criminal justice system, is particularly surprising, given that the Deputy Prime Minister himself has stated that “Jury trials are fundamental”. In a report that he wrote, he called jury trials
“a success story of our justice system”.
Juries are not the cause of the court backlog; that was complacency from the former Government and a failure to grip the issue by this Government, totally failing the victims who are currently waiting. Will the Minister clarify whether this MOJ proposal is a suggested temporary emergency measure or a permanent erosion of our criminal justice system? Does she share my concern that the Office for Budget Responsibility is showing a real-terms cut of 3% a year to the MOJ’s capital budget after the Budget yesterday? Does she agree with the Deputy Prime Minister’s diagnosis from opposition that the Government should
“pull their finger out and acquire empty public buildings across the country”
in order to clear the backlog?
Sarah Sackman
As the hon. Member heard me say a moment ago, the constitutional right that we guarantee every citizen in this country who comes before our criminal courts is the right to a fair trial. When victims are waiting for years for their day in court, right now justice is not being served. When the Secretary of State made those comments, it was obviously in a very different context, not one where the Conservatives had allowed the backlogs to run out of control. As I said clearly earlier, the right to a jury trial and the jury trial will always be a cornerstone of the British justice system. That will not change. It does not change in Sir Brian’s report, in which he recommends the restriction of jury trials in certain cases, and it will not change in the plans that the Government are bringing out. She is right that we need a combination of structural reform and investment and, indeed, we are making that investment. We have increased capital investment in court maintenance and buildings to £148.5 million. We are opening new criminal courts, for example in central London, in Blackpool and in other parts of the country. We have to build system capacity, with more judges, more lawyers and more staff to man those cases, but ultimately we must be laser-focused on the need to deliver swifter justice for victims. In order to do that, we will, in due course, in response to Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations, bring forward very careful plans that protect people’s rights, including that right to a fair trial.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
After 14 years of the previous Government, many in Oldham feel that justice has left town. Our county court closed, our magistrates court closed, and police station after police station closed as well. Today, in a town of a quarter of a million people, not a single custody cell is in operation. We are looking to address that with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, bringing forward plans for a new police station with custody cells. But ideally we want a justice centre with courts brought back to Oldham so that magistrates can take the bench in the town and justice can be served and be seen to be served.
Sarah Sackman
What my hon. Friend described, in graphic detail—the way in which justice has visibly eroded in his town—is the result of 14 years of Conservative failure, austerity and fundamental neglect of our justice system. What we are doing in so many areas is rebuilding and restoring the confidence that the British public can have in our justice system.
We inherited two crises. First, we inherited a prison system running red hot. How irresponsible of the so-called party of law and order to allow prisons to be full so that dangerous criminals would not have a prison place. Secondly—perhaps this is less visible, but it is no less serious—we inherited a crisis in our criminal justice system and in our courts, where victims are waiting longer and longer for justice. As my hon. Friend said, our constituents deserve to see visible justice. They deserve to see that when they report a crime, it does not take years for it to come to trial, but that it happens swiftly—within months—so that people can see the consequences of their actions. That, by the way, also reduces recidivism. That is why will do whatever it takes to bring down the backlog.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I served as a young barrister in criminal courts, and I have served on a jury, and I can say that I was deeply impressed by the care that people on the jury, from all walks of life, took to consider the evidence—actually, they were better than the barristers in many ways.
I can understand where the Minister is coming from, but covid was a one-off event. I say to hon. Members that if someone of previous good character is accused of what might seem to be a minor crime such as shop- lifting, having wandered out of a shop—years ago, one of our colleagues was accused of shoplifting—their whole career and whole reputation could be destroyed. Surely the Minister must accept that a person of previous good character must have a right to jury trial. This is 1,000 years of history and the greatest defence against totalitarianism. We must never throw it away. We should consider that carefully before we proceed.
Sarah Sackman
My hon. Friend is spot on. I met with a victim of child sexual abuse just the other day. He described to me the long wait for his very serious matter—[Interruption.] They laugh. I struggle, when I am talking about—
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for her answers. However, it is confusing just why this proposed decision is being considered. She talked about solutions, and I refer to Northern Ireland. More than 99% of Crown court cases in Northern Ireland are heard by a jury, and only in exceptional cases is a jury not used or heard. That continues to take place in Northern Ireland. A jury represents normal citizens and gives them a say in the democratic process. What assessment has been made of how this decision could impact on public perception and undermine the civic duty of the normal person? It will ultimately concentrate power in the state and reduce the societal values that we all represent and wish to retain.
Mr Speaker
The Minister is quite right to be angry and frustrated at this leak. I gently say to her that, to put confidence back into the system, the answer might be a leak inquiry.