Historic Shake-up: Labour Faces Backlash Over Announcement to Scrap Jury Trials
Tilly Brown - 20 February 2026
Jury trials are to be scrapped for all but the most serious crimes under a new plan set by the Labour government. The plan received furious backlash from a Labour MP, who is threatening to step down and force a by-election if the matter is not scrapped.
David Lammy, the deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, officially announced Labour’s plan to end jury trials for most criminal offences (not including murder, rape, and manslaughter cases). This has been named the biggest shake-up in the criminal justice system for the last eight hundred years. Lammy announced the abolition of jury trials for cases that would most likely have a sentence of three years or less. Stating that the plan would create new ‘swift courts,’ adding that he believes the new system will get cases dealt with a fifth faster than jury trials.
In a briefing to all government departments, Lammy declared that ‘there is no right to a jury trial’ in Britain and that judges alone should handle the bulk of cases to cut the backlog in courts across the country. As of June 2025, there were 78,329 outstanding cases in the Crown Court system in England and Wales; a record high up 10% from 70,893 in the previous year. In 2019, the backlog was 34,184, meaning it more than doubled in the past six years. The new enforcement would not apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Karl Turner, Labour MP for Hull East and former barrister, claimed that removing the right to a jury trial is ‘not something the Labour Party believes in’.
Lammy also plans to create a new tier of court, which allows judges to deal with tens of thousands of criminal offences with the hope to reduce the backlog. However, the plan was immediately disapproved by Turner, who stated he is confident in getting party support behind him to defeat the proposals if legislation is bought forward later this year.
Turner claims that there is ‘no question’ the proposal was about ‘saving money’. Turner states that the proposal would weaken a fundamental safeguard and hit working-class defendants hardest. Furthermore, he added that the right to a jury trial can act as a buffer against prejudice and an over-powered state and how bringing in this proposal would only limit the impact on the Crown Court backlog and would be detrimental to the justice system as a whole.
Solicitor advocate, Abigail Ashford, echoed this by stating that ‘judge-only trials risk deepening existing inequalities and eroding confidence among communities who already feel marginalised’. She believes that removing the community from assessing credibility and fairness undermines trust in a way that ‘cannot be compensated for by contradicting decision in the hands of a single judge’. A survey posted by the Criminal Bar Association members discovered that 88.5% are opposed to the creation of new swift courts.
Alongside this change, Lammy also announced that labour will increase magistrates’ court sentencing powers to 18 months so that they can ‘take a greater proportion of lower-level offending and relieve pressure on the Crown Court’. This is an extension to the previous 12 months, and Lammy has also stated that this could be extended to 24 months if deemed necessary.