Sarah Sackman

The right hon. Lady is right that there are regional difficulties—the situation for those in the south-east, London and parts of the north-east and the north-west is utterly dire—but let me be absolutely clear and clarify something. She says that we are scrapping jury trials, but we are not. Let us get the facts straight about the way in which the system works now and the way in which things will work once these proposals are implemented. People talk about a right to a jury trial, and the public could be forgiven for thinking that everybody who graces a criminal court gets a jury trial, but that is not how things work. Some 90% of cases in this country are heard without a jury trial; they are heard robustly and rigorously in our magistrates court, which retains that lay element. I pay tribute to the work of our magistrates, who are drawn from our communities, provide local justice and represent the communities that they serve. The remainder of cases are currently heard by jury trial, and all the most serious crimes, such as homicide, kidnapping, robbery, serious drug offences and possession of a weapon, will continue to be heard by juries under our proposals. What we are making is in line with expert recommendations, as occurs in other jurisdictions such as Canada and New South Wales, which are comparable with ours. This is a fairly modest reform removing the right to elect so that those cases that can be heard by the magistrates court are retained in the magistrates court and a modest number of cases are heard through a swifter court—the Crown court bench division. In addition, complex fraud and economic crime currently heard with a jury will appropriately be heard by an expert judge. That is a sensible, pragmatic package of reforms informed by an independent review. I am afraid that asking us simply to ignore the work of the review is not sensible. If we were to leave that review on the shelf gathering dust, people would say, “The Government are failing to pull every lever.” I am not prepared to do that. We have asked people to have a long, hard look at it—not just Sir Brian Leveson, but David Ormerod, a distinguished criminal law academic, and other members of the panel. We will take that and implement it as our blueprint.