Plans to reduce the number of jury trials in England and Wales have been branded “unpopular, untested and poorly documented” by thousands of lawyers who have written to the Prime Minister.
The letter to Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, from 3,200 lawyers, including 300 senior lawyers, comes as his government faces the prospect of one of its most serious secondary revolts since coming to power.
Efforts by David Lammy, the justice secretary, to change the mind of one of the leading Labor figures opposed to the plans, Karl Turner MP, failed after the men met on Monday night.
Turner, who had previously coordinated a letter from 38 Labor MPs urging the Prime Minister to reverse the plans, said he was “not at all” convinced.
The Conservatives are expected to force a vote to try to block the second reading in parliament on Tuesday. However, the true magnitude of the Labor rebellion may not yet be evident.
More than 65 Labor MPs are believed to be considering voting against the bill, but it is understood that many may abstain and vote against it at a later stage in the legislative process, such as the report stage.
Sarah Sackman, the courts minister, could not confirm in interviews on Tuesday morning whether Labor MPs who rebel against the vote would lose the whip.
“Nothing difficult or worth doing was ever easy and I don’t shy away from that debate. And indeed some of those voices will help us examine and improve the bill as it goes through parliament,” he told Times Radio.
Meanwhile, Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, accused the government of mounting “an unacceptable attack on an ancient right”.
“Juries provide a safeguard between the citizen and the state. But Labor wants to weaken it because Keir Starmer and David Lammy are putting what is politically expedient before the hard yards of judicial reform,” he said.
On Monday, Lammy warned opponents of the bill that criminals would go free if it was blocked.
“Today, across Britain, too many victims endure the same ordeal. For them, justice delayed becomes justice denied. When that happens, criminals are free to roam our streets and more victims are created,” the deputy prime minister wrote in an op-ed for the Telegraph.
Lammy described the magnitude of the court backlog, which the bill aims to address, as stark. He said the number of cases waiting to be heard at the Crown Court had almost doubled, from around 38,000 in 2019 to almost 80,000.
Lammy appealed to Labor MPs’ sense of social justice when he defended the plans last night at a parliamentary Labor Party meeting, telling them: “When a public service collapses, it is never the rich or the well-connected who are the first to be left stranded.”
The letter to Starmer came from thousands of legal professionals, including a former director of public prosecutions, Sir David Calvert-Smith, and was organized by the Law Society.
It said: “We write in our capacity as legal professionals with extensive experience working in courts in England and Wales at all levels and in all jurisdictions, to request that you reconsider proposals to eliminate jury trials in cases with anticipated sentences of up to three years in prison.
“We fully support and share the government’s goal of reducing the backlog in the criminal courts and reducing the delays between the alleged crime and the completion of the case. We have long warned that the criminal justice system is in crisis.
He added that juries had not “caused this crisis” and cited the findings of the independent review of the criminal courts (the Leveson review), in which Sir Brian Leveson said “the most important cause is chronic underfunding at every step”.
