Tony Vaughan

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which includes my status as a barrister. Let us remind ourselves of the issues here. It is unacceptable that criminal trials should be listed today for 2030. That is a failure of the state. It is a failure of the state to provide a fundamental public service—that of justice. So the Government have to act, and I do not accept the argument that things have to stay as they are. I welcome the Government’s £2 billion investment in the criminal justice system and the decisions to lift the cap on Crown court sitting days, to implement efficiencies, to invest in the estate and to streamline case management. All of that is overdue and should have been done by the Conservatives. This is about ensuring that trials actually go ahead. However, the Government believe that that will not be enough to address the backlog without structural change, and I have not heard any attempt to argue to the contrary. I turn to the most contentious element, which is the permanent removal of the right to elect jury trial for either-way cases. As hon. Members have said, this rests heavily on Sir Brian Leveson’s assessment of a minimum 20% time saving in the Crown court. Sir Brian has been candid that his estimate is based on modelling and is an informed qualitative judgment, not a hard empirical fact. The Ministry itself accepts that this modelling might not fully reflect real-world operations, and when dealing with a safeguard as important as trial by one’s peers, where liberty is at stake, the distinction between modelling and hard data matters. Most people seem to agree that those measures will save time, but there is a dispute about how much they are likely to save.