Restriction of Jury Trials

James Wild Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Sackman]

The right hon. Gentleman is right: we should have a robust debate about the best way forward to fix what is undeniably a broken system. As a Department, we have several sources of evidence and assessment, not least the work that was done by the Leveson review. We will bring forward the impact assessment at the appropriate time, and the House will be able to scrutinise it then.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

There is capacity for almost 2,000 more court sitting days that are not being used for rape or other trials at the moment. Why is the Justice Secretary not prioritising funding those days to help reduce the backlog, rather than trying to scrap jury trials?

[Sarah Sackman]

We are looking, where we can, to invest as much as possible, but I remind the hon. Member that, when we talk about investment in sitting days, we must look at system capacity. That requires not just judicial time, but sufficient numbers of barristers—both defence and prosecution—and as the previous Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) said, we cannot simply 3D print those. We have to invest in the professionals, and that is exactly what we announced last week, with £92 million in legal aid for criminal solicitors and an additional £34 million for barristers. I should also mention match funding for criminal law pupillages to develop the talent pipeline. All of that increases the system capacity, so that when we add on sitting days, it is not just a judge sitting there waiting for a barrister to turn up, which sometimes does not happen and leads to the trial being adjourned, but we have enough system capacity to run at the maximal and most productive level possible.