First it was digital ID cards.
Now they want to do away with trial by jury except for exceptional cases.
What next?
Apart from costs, I donât see the point of this. The Secret Barrister is on Bluesky and his take is âImagine coming up with a proposal so stupid, so unworkable, so thoughtless, that it makes Robert Jenrick look sane by comparison. Given that Starmer is a KC himself, he has a point.
Although the French system seems to have a lot of cases that arenât heard by juries.
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Having sat on a jury, I am not wholly convinced that justice is best served that way. In fraud cases for example the complexities were so great that the jury, few of whom even had GCSE maths had any understanding whatsoever of what was going on. At least 2 of the jury wanted to find people guilty on the basis that â they looked guiltyâ. Totally disregarding any evidence. The judge actually told us off because some of the jury wanted to know if they could make implications about certain things, I was so embarrassed 
. But there was one loudmouth who insisted we ask the judge. One person wanted to just get things over and done with because he was self- employed and losing money and one on benefits was enjoying her nights in the hotel so wanted to prolong it.
So are juries always fair? Not in my experience.
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Digital cards no, but the UK does need a common form of ID that everyone has. Macron recently said the reason illegal immigrants flock to the UK is because itâs so easy to get work with no ID.
I canât think of anyone who doesnât have some form of ID these days so itâs not a great leap to a national ID card.
The police certainly want it. We carry it around in France, is anyone concerned about that?
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Absolutely agree, nearly forty years ago, I was the foreman on a county court jury for a trial that lasted three days. Many members of the jury seemed incapable of following the proceedings (which werenât that complicated) and several resented having been selected for jury service and didnât actively participate.
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Nearly impossible to find enough of oneâs peers today!
I have never been called for jury service, but I am inclined to agree. A lot of cases these days (especially financial fraud) are very technical and probably beyond the wit of most jurors.
And at the other end of the scale, do you really need a jury for simple theft cases?
Itâs all debatable where you draw the line, but given that there is an appeals procedure I would think that simplifying things to unclog the justice system is worth a try.
Any appeal would also be dealt with by judges alone, of course.
Judge-only trials would speed things up a lot. Verdicts would be much more predictable, and that factor would encourage many more guilty pleas.
But all of the careful work a judge does to prevent the jury hearing prejudicial material they shouldnât would no longer be needed - because the judge himself would have to decide what evidence he considered. The vast majority of judges are used to doing that in certain cases (and in appeals), but itâs still a major constitutional change.
Labour inherited a problem that Sunak, Truss, Johnson, May and Cameron created. But such a change should be put to the electorate, in a referendum, not pushed through administratively.
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Hmmm. Not sure - we know how well that went last time it was tried. 
I am not a fan of referenda, especially where complex issues are concerned, with pros and cons on both sides.
And they are way too open to populist manipulation, as we saw with Brexit.
We elect MPs to consider such issues carefully, through debate in the House of Commons, committee stages, review by the House of Lords, and so on.
A referendum is a blunt instrument.
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That was largely because Cameron naively opted for a simplistic 50%+ threshold, which may have been fine for the Eton Debating Society, but is far too simplistic for national decision makings.
Good article on the nuances of referenda here:-
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Cameron has a lot to answer for. I donât think Iâll ever forgive him for being so indifferent to the detail of the campaign and the referendum.
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I have never served but my wife has and she was amazed at the attitudes displayed. From Indifference to sheer stupidity and at least two of them talking about text/face to face discussions they had with pals regarding the case which went on over several days. Judges definitely.
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Which I could be in favour of, done right.
Did SB say how they would reform the system? Apart from a system which works better for junior barristers, of course.
I donât think the idea of a single judge - perhaps a panel of three, although if you are trying to streamline the system to get through the backlog requiring 3x the number of judges for a given number of cases is possibly not the way to do it.
Probably not - but weâre forgetting that a lot of cases are not put before a jury anyway, being tried by a panel of magistrates.
There was some retired judge on BBC Breakfast who made the entirely reasonable (I thought) point that judges are not actually trained to be âfinders of factâ, or determiners of guilt in our system so it would not be as simple as dispensing with a jury and having a judge hear the evidence.
I was and had to pitch up at around ten for jury selection every morning for a week. Having been in the office beforehand and before the days of âbusiness casualâ I was formally dressed. The defence barristers all rejected me, day in day out. Very hurtful 
After a week of it I was told not to come back the following week.
NâexagĂ©rez pas tout de mĂȘme.
Really? Even in your part-time job as Starmerâs Press Secretary, you canât believe that 
It overturns one of the key provisions of Magna Carta. Itâs Trumpian in scale and effect. It takes away what everyone - until the announcement - would have said was a fundamental right of every citizen.
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The UK has a parliamentary democracy. Parliament decides what the laws are.
As for Magna Carta, that was an agreement between King John and his barons (which both sides often disregarded and which was amended several times). Its constitutional significance is very overrated.
In any case, the proposal is not to get rid of trial by jury but to limit its use. It is already limited in its application so this is not a novel idea.
I have no idea if this change is a good idea or not, but it does not warrant any sort of constitutional outrage.
BTW I hold no brief for Keir Starmer I am a Lib Dem voter and always have been. 
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Weâll have to agree to differ on that. Parliament wouldnât agree 
https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/2015-parliament-in-the-making/get-involved1/2015-banners-exhibition/ruth-ewan/1215-magna-carta-gallery/
I suppose if one has never been involved in the criminal justice system, thereâs a temptation to think âOh, itâll never happen to me: the police only arrest criminals.â
This is true.
This not so much.
Most MPs couldnât tell you the detail of any bills theyâd voted on as theyâre lobby fodder who do as the whips instruct. On any given bill, itâs down to a few MPs who might actually have an interest and even then theyâd need the courage to rebel if they werenât happy.
Lady Hale, the deputy president of the supreme court, acknowledges that âhistorians tend not to be so excitedâ because they see it as ânot so very different from the charters of other kings, and that much of its contents were simply reaffirming generally understood principles of feudal lawâ. She adds, however, that Magna Carta confirmed âthe idea that government as well as the governed is bound by the lawâ.
Its importance is more symbolic than actual.
Whether the police arrest people or not has nothing to do with trial by jury. Thatâs a non-sequitur.
Well, it is if you âdo a Panoramaâ on what I said!
Iâll unpack it a bit.
Most people have never been involved in the criminal justice system (witness, police, lawyers, judges, âŠ) and tend to take the view that it affects only other people and the chances are that the accused is guilty, because why would the police arrest him if not?
Suspects and accused people - and their friends and families, suddenly forced to actuall think about the subject - tend to take a different view!
And when you consider the acquittal rate in the Crown Court (England & Wales) is around 17%, itâs clear that the protection of a jury trial is important to one in six.