Mr David Lammy

I am very grateful to the shadow Justice Secretary, although I am a little surprised that in his tirade, he never once mentioned victims—not once. Not once in his clip did he talk about the people waiting in the backlog. The right hon. Gentleman has boasted that he is an armchair historian. May I give him a history lesson? In 2019, Crown court sitting days were cut by almost 15%. The Conservatives oversaw a 12% reduction in Crown court trials, and many of us remember, over those 14 years of austerity, the magistrates courts and Crown courts that closed in local communities under his watch. The senior presiding judge in England and Wales said: “It was a political decision.” I wonder if the shadow Justice Secretary will try to blame the pandemic for that decision. The right hon. Gentleman talks about what I tweeted in 2020. We are saving and protecting jury trials. Jury trials will continue. He talks about trial by jury as if we lived in the United States, but 90% of criminal trials—1.3 million—are done by our magistracy, which has existed for 650 years. We are going to grow our magistrates, who we believe could do more. The right hon. Gentleman talks about Magna Carta. Yes, clause 39 establishes the jury trial and a fair trial—we are proud of that—but he knows, too, that clause 40 asks us not to delay justice. That is the substance of this debate, and that is why we need reform. He knows that the Conservatives took juries away from defamation cases in 2013. Back in 1933, we had juries sitting in civil cases. Of course we reform; we do so to meet the needs of the system. He also knows that because of DNA evidence, CCTV and a whole raft of reasons, including that the police now arrest 10% more people, we have a demand issue. We must meet that challenge, and we must ensure that we put victims at the centre of our criminal justice system. That is who it is there for, and it is why he should have mentioned them.