The Prime Minister’s mentor and founder of Doughty Street Chambers has criticised the government for seeking to abolish trial by jury.

Speaking on GB News, Geoffrey Robertson KC said: “Judges are an elite so it’s the jury that we can trust and particularly because of its role in our Constitution.

“Because two things are vital. One, juries can stand up to the government. You can’t get a draconian law that’s passed if jurors use their right of conscience to stop it, and many times in our history, they’ve done that.

“And of course, the other great thing about the jury is that it’s the dispenser of mercy. It’s power to acquit people who’ve been oppressed by police or people who are simply piteous and don’t deserve punishment, it can acquit, and that’s a great thing.

“If we’ve been taught anything by Shakespeare, we’ve been taught that mercy is the soul of justice. We must have mercy. Other countries rely on pardons or whatever, but our juries show mercy.

“So they’re not like the judges of Russia or China with 99% conviction rate, but they have this power to show mercy.

“[Keir Starmer] is very busy, let’s face it, dealing with Donald Trump. But his subordinates, David Lammy basically, are saying, well, we do have a backlog, and it’s true, and we have to deal with that backlog.

“But we are and the government has proceeded to inject more money into the system.

“This all started, this backlog, because of austerity, back in 2010 cutting the Ministry of Justice. It was easy. It was easy with poor ministers like Chris Grayling and Liz Truss who didn’t realise what was happening.

“And then Covid. Covid increased the backlog four times, and we’re still catching up with it. But we can.

“Of course, we’re concerned with victims, but when they did studies of victims that had to wait three years for jury trial, they found that two of those years were wasted through police delays, particularly forensic science delays in investigating phones and doing forensic medicine and CPS, the Crown Prosecution Service delays.

“The jury trial took a year, and that was adequate. So there are other efficiencies to put in the system. Some courts have no backdrop at all, Liverpool and Cardiff in particular.

“So there are other ways of dealing with it without destroying this great institution that we have a trial by jury.”