Restriction of Jury Trials

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. There are delays between report of an offence and charge. The reasons for those can be very complicated. I used to work for the Crown Prosecution Service and I know how difficult it can be. An awful lot of investigation has to go on. Quite often, such investigations are looking at events that took place an awfully long time ago. It is probably fair to say that everybody thinks that we could and should do better. The Home Office deals with matters in relation to the police, but I will ensure that I write to the noble Lord and answer his question, which is a perfectly proper one.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Will the Minister condemn the remarks of one of her colleagues in the other place, who smeared defenders of the right to trial by jury as men in suits defending a Magna Carta myth? In fact, the right to trial by jury dates to before Magna Carta, to Henry II, who, I point out, for the benefit of the Justice Secretary, came after Henry I and not before.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Oh dear. I feel that I did not even respond to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Gove, about me explaining it better than the Deputy Prime Minister. I am certainly not going to agree with that, and I am not going to be giving the Deputy Prime Minister any history lessons either.

This Government are completely committed to jury trial. There is absolutely no question of our doing away with jury trials. All we are doing is moving some cases down so that they will be dealt with in the magistrates’ court in order to free up space. We are not the only Government to have done this. The Criminal Justice Act 1988 reclassified three groups of offences—common assault, taking vehicles without consent and criminal damage—that had previously been triable either way as summary only. Does anybody want to take a history lesson on which Government were in power?