A former Conservative minister has said proposals to scrap trial by jury is “ripping up the heart of our criminal legal system.”
Speaking on GB News Sir Ranil Jayawardena said: “This is absolutely shocking and it’s almost counter to everything that I’d have thought this Labour government, led by human rights lawyers, would believe.
“They are taking away the rights of citizens across this country by doing this. Trial by one’s peers was guaranteed in the Magna Carta 1215 and a few 100 years later, in the Habeas Corpus Act it was guaranteed that there would be trial by jury, as we now have.
“This is ripping up the heart of our criminal legal system. It is a disaster, and he’s done once again, another Lammy.
“There is a backlog, and it really frustrated me, even when we were in government, and it should be frustrating the current government, that why are we not getting more courts to sit more often?
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“They are empty huge amounts of the time. We need to actually be encouraging the very highly paid judges in this country to sit more often and hear more cases.
“I think that there is too small a pool of people who become judges, actually. I do think that there are too many lefty lawyers, full stop, and I think too many of them do end up as judges.
“I think on balance, there are plenty of good judges, of course there are, but we do look at some decisions that are taken in sentencing and look, how can that be the right sentence to punish the criminal and to defend the public? It cannot be right.
“So there are many questions already over the decisions of the judiciary. And if they’re now going to be able to choose not only the sentence but decide fact, that is concerning.
“Part of the point about having trial by jury, trial by one’s peers, is that sometimes the jury will take a view that perhaps strays beyond the law, because it’s accepting that that person should be found not guilty, and that’s why so many people do actually try and play the system today and the more serious things that could be heard at Magistrates Court are sometimes bumped upstairs.
“So I do welcome that [increased sentencing powers for magistrates] But what we then need is magistrates to actually use those powers and yet just like the lefty lawyers who become judges who don’t want to send anyone to prison, they’re often the advisors to those magistrates, the clerks to the magistrates, often tells them not to send people to prison, because that wouldn’t be right. We need the magistrates to send people to prison to protect the public.”