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Spare a thought for David Lammy. Not so long ago he was foreign secretary. His dream job. Turning left on boarding planes to go to meet his counterparts around the world. An important player in global geopolitics. Then he found himself out on his ear. Replaced by Yvette Cooper, who had been booted out of the Home Office for being perceived to be soft on asylum seekers.
But at least Yvette got to fail upwards. Lammy just found himself downgraded to justice secretary. A department that has been unloved, downgraded and underfunded for years. Worse still, David now finds himself being forced to advocate policies the old David Lammy never once dreamed of himself making. Even as foreign secretary he would have been shaking his head in disapproval. Yet needs must.
Still, one man’s pain was another woman’s gain. For Rachel Reeves there was the relief that the dial had finally shifted on the budget. The worst of the storm had passed, most of the rightwing papers had dialled down their interest and only Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride were still to be found howling to each other in a cupboard at some imagined wrongdoing.
So it was that at lunchtime on Tuesday, Lammy appeared in the Commons to make a statement on curtailing the right to trial by jury. This was once-in-a-generation reform, he said. The justice system was falling to pieces. The court backlog was now running at 78,000 and would soon reach 100,000. Defendants were pleading not guilty to buy some time in the hope that victims and courts would lose patience and drop their cases.
Now you might have thought that the sensible answer was to fund the system properly. To make sure there were more sitting days. To fix the heating and air-conditioning units. To build new courts and prison stock. To train more barristers and judges, and increase legal aid funding. But that would require a level of time and investment no one is prepared to make. People like to moan about the justice system but no one wants to pay for it. So it falls apart. And instead we get sticking plaster solutions that even the government doesn’t believe will really make a difference.
Investment was not enough, said Lammy. At least, not the amounts he was prepared to put in. So there would now be judge-only trials for either-way cases with a sentence of three years. This would be a good thing, he insisted. A balance in favour of the victims. It was one of the founding principles of Magna Carta. More important than the right to trial by jury was the article stating that justice delayed is justice denied. It had just taken successive governments 800 years to properly implement it. This is what the barons had wanted all along at Runnymede.
In any case, when you came to think about it, a judge-only trial was in many ways fairer than trial by 12 men and women. Because at least when judges deliver their verdict they have to give their reasoning. A jury just came back with a guilty verdict. No explanation. So they could just have all had it in for the defendant. Taken exception to the way he looked. We were entering a new era of transparency.
The same with the decision to increase cases that magistrates could judge to ones with a sentence of 18 months. Let’s face it. Magistrates lived in the community and were part of the community. Much like jurors. Judges lived on their own private islands. So actually being tried by a magistrate was exactly the same as being tried by a jury. I’m not sure Lammy was entirely persuaded of this argument that had been prepared for him, but he said it nonetheless.
Lammy ended by pointing out this was no big deal, as 90% of cases were already tried by magistrates and only 3% went to jury trial. So you rather wondered why he was going to so much trouble to do something that wouldn’t make much difference. But David was nothing if not hopeful. There would be more people banged up, he declared. At least there would be if the prisons weren’t already full and there was somewhere to put them. Maybe accidentally releasing a further 12 prisoners was a cunning plan all along. Who knows? All the escapers could form their own roving jury.
In reply, the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, was condescension personified. Speaking … extra … slowly … to … sound … clever. He seems to think everything is an audition for a TV gameshow, “So You Think You Want To Be Tory Leader”. He is ever optimistic that Kemi might implode.
Honest Bob has had it in for judges ever since the Daily Mail told him they were the “enemies of the people”. But his newfound enthusiasm for the rights of defendants to a trial by jury is an unexpected development. Not so long ago he seemed to be all for summary justice for most offenders. Especially asylum seekers. Do what you like with them. Just as long as they don’t take up any of our time and money. But now he was coming over as a latter-day Rumpole of the Bailey. The quality of mercy is not strained. He sounded fake. A man in search of a soundbite rather than solutions.
Not even his own backbenchers take him seriously. Jeremy Wright ignored him and commended Lammy for at least trying to come up with a solution to the court backlog. Just not the right one. Would it not be better if the jury reform was made temporary? To be reinstated once the system was functioning again?
Lammy didn’t realise he was being offered a life belt. Something that might appease MPs who were queasy about a permanent change. Even if the system was hardwired never to work properly. Instead he mumbled something about “jury trials being a peculiar way to run a public service”. What? Sometimes he is his own worst enemy.
MPs on his own side of the chamber were less than impressed. Diane Abbott observed that judge-only trials would result in a greater number of miscarriages of justice. Many judges came from the same class and had the same unconscious biases. And it was defendants like her and the justice secretary who would be the victims.
Richard Burgon wondered what would happen if Reform – “Putin’s Pals” – were in power and started appointing their own judges. Unlikely, said Lammy. Yes. But the Lammy of just a few months ago would have been one of the most vocal in saying that cutting jury trials was the hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
