Restricted right to Jury Trial: What will the proposed changes mean?

On 2 December 2025, the Justice Secretary announced the Government’s intention to implement significant changes to trial by jury. The extent to which they will be implemented remains to be seen. The proposals are controversial and will face significant opposition inside and outside Parliament. This is likely to be a long process.

The Justice Secretary has proposed a number of reforms that are intended to be introduced against the background of a serious and worsening backlog of Crown Court cases, and significant problems across various areas of the criminal justice system. The backlog is now estimated at about 80,000 cases. This is about double the 2019 levels, though that figure was already growing some years before Covid-19.

A retired former Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Brian Leveson, was tasked with reviewing and proposing actions to address this. In a damning assessment, he warned that the criminal justice system in England and Wales is facing collapse under an unsustainable backlog in the Crown Court. By late 2024, more than 73,000 Crown Court cases were unresolved — the highest level ever recorded — prompting him to conclude that “justice delayed is justice denied.” He also stated that “the speed of justice cannot be pursued at any cost.”

Specifically, the following resulting steps have been announced:

• Jury trial will be retained for cases involving offences with a likely sentence of more than three years. All serious indictable cases such as murder, rape, GBH, robbery and arson with intent would remain affected and continue to be the subject of jury trial.
• A new ‘Swift Court’ system would be created where a single Judge would conduct trials for offences with a likely sentence of three years or less. The Judge would give a formal judgment to explain any verdict.
• Long and complex fraud trial cases would be dealt with by a Judge alone and without a Jury.
• Sentencing powers in the Magistrates Court would be extended to a maximum of 18 months imprisonment (and possibly even two years in due course).

In Parliament, the Justice Secretary also announced a possible reduction in the ambit of appeals from the Magistrates’ Court to restrict them to matters of law.

The proposal to restrict the right to a jury trial is extremely controversial.

Opponents argue that limiting jury trials would mark the thin end of the wedge, ultimately denying many defendants a vital safeguard. They maintain that juries generally reach fair outcomes based on the evidence they hear, and that the causes of the court backlog are complex, affecting not only the Crown Court but the Magistrates’ Court as well.

In their view, the right to a jury trial should never be compromised or used as a mechanism to reduce delays. They also contend that the proposed changes would have little real impact on a justice system that has been under-resourced for years, and that only proper funding and investment will provide a meaningful solution.

They maintain that the real reasons for the crisis in the criminal justice system has nothing to do with juries but is a combination of numerous factors, including: lack of investment and funding, inefficient court listing, failures to produce prisoners in custody to court, IT issues, lack of judges, fewer criminal lawyers due to intolerably low legal aid payments, court buildings in disrepair and poor case management leading to case being adjourned or dropped. In parallel, they believe the criminal-legal-aid framework must be strengthened: the system needs sustained investment so that legal aid lawyers are available, court rooms can sit at full capacity, and cases do not collapse for lack of resources — or else delays will continue, even under a new court structure.

The Government’s justification for Swift Courts – where cases with a likely sentence of three years or less – is based on three-quarters of Crown Court convictions (after a trial) resulting in either no custody or sentences of no more than three years (for non-serious cases). It is argued that such cases can be dealt with perfectly well and fairly by a Judge alone, thereby freeing up courts to tackle the case backlog that juries will sit on. The objection to this is that this still removes the right to a jury trial (where a defendant is tried by twelve people of a wide background), and it is immaterial that, in many cases, sentences of three years or less happen to be imposed if there is indeed a conviction.

Those advancing the argument for some restriction on jury trial also argue there is no ultimate right to a jury trial in its current format, that other legal jurisdictions do not have this and perform perfectly well with just outcomes, that there is no need for jury trial for offences of lower seriousness, that some defendants “game” the system by electing Crown Court in order to create delay and, finally, a backlog of 80,000 cases in the Crown Court is simply unsustainable with years of delay creating injustice and delay, victims often declining to pursue further their cases due to stress and anguish.

Those opposing this initiative maintain that if the Justice Secretary presses ahead with abolishing jury trials, he risks undermining the very foundation of fair justice — the right to be judged by one’s peers. This radical shift would concentrate life-altering power in the hands of a single professional judge and erode public trust in verdicts. What is more, such a move actually contradicts the spirit of Sir Brian Leveson’s review of the criminal courts, which, while addressing deep-rooted problems like backlog and inefficiency, did not in fact call for the sweeping abolition of jury trials. Opponents reiterate that if real reform is desired, the focus must remain on investing in legal aid, tackling underfunding, and fixing systemic failure — not stripping away centuries-old safeguards that protect justice and fairness.

It remains to be seen how this will ultimately play out.

Background information

The overwhelming majority of cases are dealt with to conclusion in the Magistrates Court – estimated around 90% – and so only a small proportion of cases proceed to the Crown Court, in any event.

Criminal offences are divided into three broad categories:

• summary offences that are lower-level ones, including a large number of road traffic offences;
• indictable offences that are the most serious ones, such as murder, rape, GBH/with intent, etc. and which can only be heard in the Crown Court; and
• either-way offences that can be heard either in the Magistrates Court or the Crown Court. (These are a wide range of offences that include dishonesty, some offences of violence, a sexual nature and public order and many more, including regulatory criminal offences such as environmental or health and safety-related cases.)

Either-way offences are sent to the Crown Court for trial (or sentence) by the Magistrates’ Court if the offences are deemed serious or complex enough; if they are not, the Defendant has the right to a Crown Court trial and may exercise this right. This means that a Defendant can seek a Crown Court trial for cases that are deemed less serious by the Court, in relative terms, but not to them personally in terms of protecting their reputation and exercising their right for a jury to hear their case.

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