Courts and Tribunals Bill

Lord Bellamy Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and to say at once that I largely agree with everything she said. Clearly, something must be done about the unacceptable backlog in the Crown Courts, but what? As she just said, what is the answer? Does this Bill get the balance right?

I will address only one point: the removal of the right to elect jury trial in “either way” offences. That is the removal of a right that currently exists. It leaves the mode of trial to the discretion of the magistrates without, as far as one can see, any appeal as to how that discretion is to be exercised in a particular case. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, we need to know a lot more about how this is supposed to work and what the impact will be. I understand, and the Minister will put me right if I have it wrong, that this proposal goes together with the increase of sentencing powers of magistrates to 18 months. The general idea is that the magistrates will follow the allocation guidelines of the Sentencing Council. In other words, they will decide allocation according to the expected length of the possible sentence; if it is under 18 months, the case will stay in the magistrates’ court.

There is, as I have just said, no appeal from the magistrates’ decision as far as one can see. Many will have reservations about this increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers. But among the questions are whether the right to a jury should be determined on a case-by-case basis rather than set by Parliament on the basis of a very clear classification of particular offences or criteria set out in statute. Should the length of sentence be the only consideration? Should a discretion based on guidelines set by a third party, however respected—here, the Sentencing Council—be a substitute for rules clearly defined by Parliament?

The impact statement says that this measure and changes in the sentencing powers would remove about 25,000 cases a year from the Crown Court—that is about 30% of annual receipts—and save 5,500 jury trials. But that is about the number of jury trials that take place each year, so a very substantial reduction in jury trials is envisaged. Can the Minister explain the basis of these figures in the impact statement and, following observations by other noble Lords, what work has been done to establish that the magistrates’ courts can deal with this substantial increase in their caseload? I shall come back to that point in a moment.

More generally, and in common with other noble Lords who have spoken, some of us greatly value public participation in the justice system—the idea that it is citizens themselves who are administering justice and that justice is not something that comes down from higher beings to the lower echelons. Any diminution of that is to be regretted and requires justification, for the reasons given by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

As has been particularly mentioned, there is the situation of the ethnic minorities, and the view—very correctly expressed by David Lammy himself in his famous Lammy Review—that the jury system is the only part of the criminal justice system that is fully trusted by the ethnic minorities. I welcome, of course, the Minister’s suggestion of some sort of review of this aspect, but if one is going to risk a diminution of ethnic minorities’ confidence in our justice system, one is very much playing with fire.

More generally—and these are points that have already been made—I have not heard it suggested that the jury system itself has been a significant contributor to delays in the Crown Court. Rather, as the reports of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, emphasise, the Crown Court is and has been, for reasons that have been explained—including underinvestment, however regrettable that may have been—highly inefficient. Even today, we are given to understand that 25% of all criminal trials are ineffective: the prison van does not turn up; the papers have been served too late; the counsel is unavailable; the interpreter missed the train; the witness is missing; and so forth. One is left with the impression that trial by jury is being emasculated because of efficiency failures elsewhere in the system, and that is a cause of great concern.

By contrast, as has already been said by several noble Lords, the backlog in the magistrates’ court is rising; the shortage of legal advisers is acute; legal aid is less available in the magistrates’ court and the legal aid rates are much lower, risking more unrepresented defendants. The magistrates, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, emphasised, have great difficulty in trying any cases that are of a more complex kind, particularly cases that go over beyond the day or will last for a few hours longer than the average. That is going to place the magistrates’ courts in great difficulty. I pay tribute to our lay magistracy, but I share the fears of other noble Lords that we are in danger of overwhelming them by this approach that we are adopting.

So what is to be done? I suggest a twin track: let us implement as rapidly as possible the extensive reforms proposed in detail by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, including the national listing framework, the unlimited sitting days, which are already having an impact, and the various other suggestions made by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so as to make the whole system much more efficient and joined-up, including the police and the CPS.

At the same time, perhaps we should consider a proposal to move a block of lesser offences, to be defined by Parliament, into the magistrates’ court, as also originally proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson. In my view, constitutionally it falls to Parliament to decide who does or does not qualify for jury trial. In principle, on an issue as fundamental as jury trial, that decision should be taken by Parliament and not left to the discretion of the magistrates, however conscientious and hard-working they may be.