Monday Message 24.11.25

[Chief Justice of Common Pleas, 1628] 

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The right to trial by jury dates back to Saxon Britain, before the Norman invasion of 1066. It is enshrined in Magna Carta. It has been a fundamental feature of the British Constitution, and the British Justice System, for over 800 years.

Jury trial, in place for hundreds of serious offences, is a right which has been applauded and emulated by other nations. It is woven into the fabric of British society and is something of which the public has rightly been proud. Juries are trusted by ordinary working people – the very people this Government repeatedly and pointedly professes to care for, to represent and to keep safe from harm. Juries are made up of ordinary human beings from all walks of life, of all ages, sex and ethnic background.

As David Lammy MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice himself said in his Review in 2017:

And yet, on Thursday 20th November, Sarah Sackman MP, Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services, through an article published in the Guardian, announced that the Government is preparing to legislate to remove the right to trial by jury for thousands of cases, thousands of people who have been accused of a crime.

The CBA responded immediately, to make it clear that we oppose the changes, a statement which has been carried by other media organisations.

It is now clear that the Government is gearing up for a slick public relations campaign to sell this attack on long-established rights.

On Monday 17th November the LinkedIn account of “Sarah Sackman, MP for Finchley and Golders Green, Minister of State for Justice” published a slickly produced MOJ video of Ms, Sackman visiting Toronto, Canada, promoting the concept of ‘judge-alone trials’.  Ms Sackman entitles her MoJ social media post introducing the MOJ: “Canada and courts, with a splash of maple syrup… Watch this video to find out more!”

The video includes a very short clip of someone identified only as Dimitra (Deputy Director, Regional Director of Crown Operations) saying “Judge-alone trials in Canada are basically the norm. There’s no difference to the average person whether the trial is done before a judge or a jury. And we have accepted that. There’s no issue with it.”

The problem with this, and with this social media post as a whole, is that it is totally misleading about the Canadian system. It completely fails to mention the fact that one of the most significant features of the Canadian criminal justice system is the right of an accused person to ELECT trial by jury. “A feature which is cherished by the defence and never questioned as being unfair”. [Laura Hoyano, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Oxford, English law Barrister at Red Lion Court, and Canadian Lawyer].

I grew up in Canada. I went to school in Canada. I went to University in Canada. I am writing this message sitting at the kitchen table in my family home in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

I don’t propose to give a lecture here on the Canadian criminal justice system but suffice to say that although based on some good aspects of the British system, the Canadian version is very different, and the position far more nuanced than has been represented.  “It has many distinctive features, especially the very powerful constitutional rights for the accused embedded by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982).”  [Laura Hoyano, above, from “An Overview of the Canadian Criminal Justice System” a paper prepared on behalf of the CBA for the Leveson Inquiry].

There are significant differences between our system and the Canadian system. Amongst the many differences are the classification of offences, the court structures, and the way committal hearings are conducted. Lay magistrates in Canada were abolished in the 1980’s because of concerns about their competence. An accused in Canada has a right in advance of trial to hear the Crown’s case, and to test the evidence in a process more akin to our old-style committals. And speaking to my many friends here, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the right to elect trial by jury is indeed fundamental and cherished. [For further comment see Laura Hoyano’s article published yesterday on Substack in response to Ms. Sackman’s post – here].

There is also a significant trial backlog in Canada, with at least one news report suggesting that here too trials are beginning to be scheduled for 2029. This from Thunder Bay News, published on, 6th November 2025, a week before Ms Sackman shared the MOJ video extolling the Canadian system.

We who practise in criminal law know that context is everything.

Whilst the CBA agrees that there is much to be gained and learned from looking at the Canadian system, cherry-picking in the way the MoJ have done, and reporting without full context is simply wrong, and wholly misleading.

Before moving into politics, Sarah Sackman was barrister, who practised in housing, public and environmental law. She is highly experienced in her fields of practice, intelligent and well-meaning, and there is no doubt that she genuinely wishes to fix the backlogs in the criminal courts of England and Wales and reduce delays for all trials.  But she and this Government should know better than to resort to cynical propaganda publications.

And where is the Secretary of State for Justice David Lammy in all this? Where is our Deputy Prime Minister? Possibly keeping a low profile because the Right Honourable Mr Lammy, MP for Tottenham, recalls all too well his own comments in the much lauded and welcomed Lammy Review in 2017, that he himself went on to reference in his swearing-in speech as Lord Chancellor on 1st October of this year, in which he said his task was three-fold: to respect the rule of law; to defend the independence of the judiciary; and to provide efficient and effective support of the courts:

The erosion of the right to jury trial will break the increasingly thin connection between the State and ordinary people, and risks undermining social cohesion and trust in the criminal justice system. Once that trust disappears, fears of tyrannical governments increase and the faith in justice evaporates for good. Just as Mr. Lammy’s own comments above predict.

Our judges and their independence must be protected. The judges who preside over cases in the criminal courts are as stretched as we criminal barristers are and are working in the same unacceptable conditions that we do. We support them, and work with them, to keep criminal trials moving through the system, through the backlog created by years of underfunding by this, and previous governments.

Sarah Sackman MP in the Guardian article (cited above), has made some concerning comments about her visit to Wood Green Crown Court. She reported that she was told that defendants “come into court laughing in the face of justices, knowing they can go back on the streets and commit further offences”, suggesting that as a reason to restrict their right to jury trial. That experience is not one that is shared by most of us who practice at the criminal bar.

The problem lies within the assumption that an accused person is guilty. That assumption flies in the face of everything our system of justice here in England and Wales is about. That assumption demonstrates more clearly than anything else exactly why we need JURIES, and not JUDGE-ALONE trials for such offences. Because within that statement lies prejudice.

In stark contrast to that, consider the comments of HHJ David Herbert KC on the 20th of November 2025 at Northampton Crown Court. His comments to the jury in the trial over which he was presiding were made in public, and on the record, and are echoed by judges in courts across the country every day:

But for Now, I leave you with a screenshot of a telling email that was forwarded to me last week by more than one criminal barrister practicing at this court: