The government has said it will remove plans to expand judge-alone criminal trials from the Courts and Tribunals Bill, while pressing ahead with other measures intended to reduce delays in the criminal courts.
The announcement is a change to the government’s proposed legislation, not a change already in force. The Bill is due to return to the House of Commons on 13 October, when ministers say the amendments will be made. Until Parliament has considered and passed any changes, the existing legal arrangements continue to apply.
Broader judge-alone plan to be removed
Ministers had proposed a wider route for some criminal cases to be heard by a judge without a jury. That element is now to be dropped. The Justice Secretary said the decision followed the strength of feeling expressed about increasing the number of judge-alone trials in the Crown Court.
The government’s position is that more serious cases will continue to be heard before juries. That distinction matters: the announcement does not abolish jury trials, but withdraws a proposed expansion of judge-alone hearings that had become a major point of contention in the wider court-reform programme.
A narrower judge-alone provision is set to remain in the Bill. Ministers say technical and lengthy fraud and financial-offence cases could be heard by a judge alone, with the aim of avoiding jurors having to sit through exceptionally long and complex trials. The planned exception is limited to that type of case in the announcement; it should not be read as a general power to replace juries in criminal trials.
Other court measures remain on the table
The government also intends to retain proposals to give magistrates longer sentencing powers. Its stated aim is for more cases to be dealt with more quickly at that level of the court system.
Another retained change would give courts the final say over where certain less serious cases are heard. Ministers say this is intended to prevent defendants accused of relatively minor offences from choosing a jury trial simply to avoid a prison sentence. In practice, any such change would alter the present balance between a defendant’s election and the court’s decision on venue, so its final wording and safeguards will be important when the Bill returns to Parliament.
The package is being presented alongside operational measures rather than as a single solution to delay. Ministers have pointed to technology for listing cases, further virtual hearings and efforts to ensure defendants arrive at court on time. A full response to both parts of the Leveson review is promised in the coming weeks, so the detail and timetable for those wider efficiency measures are still to come.
Backlog remains the central pressure
The policy change comes against a record Crown Court backlog. The government says nearly 81,000 cases are waiting, with almost a third having been outstanding for at least a year. Those figures describe a system under serious pressure for victims, defendants and witnesses, but they do not show that any one proposed reform will produce a particular reduction in waiting times.
For London, where Crown Courts and magistrates’ courts form part of the national system affected by the Bill, the announcement has relevance even though it is not a London-only policy. The potential effect will depend on the legislation Parliament ultimately approves, court capacity, judicial and staff resources, and how any new procedures are implemented locally.
What happens next
When the Bill returns, the government says it will also make a statutory commitment to consider the effect of structural reforms on ethnic minorities and people from different backgrounds, led by an independent reviewer. That is a proposed safeguard connected to the reforms, rather than a completed assessment.
The immediate development is therefore a clear policy reversal on wider judge-alone criminal trials, combined with a decision to retain selected court-efficiency reforms. The legal position will only be settled through the parliamentary process. Readers should distinguish between the government’s announced amendments and measures that have actually become law.
