Minister admits jury trials would be curbed regardless of courts crisis
The government would still curb jury trials even if the criminal courts were not in crisis, the courts minister revealed yesterday – as MPs demanded yet again to see the impact assessment for the proposal.
When the plan to axe a quarter of jury trials was announced last month, justice secretary David Lammy said the reforms were necessary ‘to tackle the emergency in our courts’.
Defending the proposals in a Commons debate yesterday, courts minister Sarah Sackman said: ‘People ask me, “Sarah, would you be doing this if there was not a crisis in our courts?” I say yes, because we need a better system. One in which courts, not criminals, triage cases.
‘We need a system that makes better use of jurors’ time and ensures that someone accused of shoplifting is not in the same queue as a victim of another crime. No one has had the guts to take on a programme of reform of this scale, but this government have the guts. The Conservatives had 14 years to fix the system, but they ran it into the ground. We make a different choice, we are bringing forward change.’
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