Solihull West & Shirley MP Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst today warned in Parliament that the Government’s decision to scrap jury trials for most criminal offences risks undermining one of Britain’s most important constitutional protections, while doing little to address the true causes of delay in the criminal justice system.
Speaking during an Opposition Day debate in the House of Commons, the Conservative MP said that trial by jury was “not some procedural convenience capable of being abridged when the administrative weather turns foul”, but a cornerstone of liberty that places “the citizen, not the state, at the heart of criminal judgment”.
Dr Shastri-Hurst acknowledged that the justice system is under acute strain, with victims and defendants facing unacceptable delays. However, he argued that the Government had failed to demonstrate that jury trials themselves were responsible for those delays, or that removing them would deliver a fairer or more effective system.
He said, “Justice delayed is indeed justice denied. But justice expedited at the cost of constitutional principle may prove a far graver denial still.”
Dr Shastri-Hurst pointed to a series of structural failures within the justice system that he said were the real drivers of delay, including a shortage of judicial sitting days, crumbling court buildings, repeated failures in prisoner transport, and the ongoing erosion of the criminal Bar due to years of underinvestment.
He said, “Courtrooms stand idle not because juries cannot be summoned, but because no judge is available to sit. Trials collapse not because of juries, but because defendants fail to arrive, roofs leak, technology fails, or advocates simply cannot be found.”
Warning against mistaking symptoms for causes, Dr Shastri-Hurst said that curtailing jury trials risked creating a system that was “faster but thinner”, perhaps administratively efficient but less legitimate in the eyes of the public.
He also invoked the former Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham’s warning about the dangers of an “elective dictatorship”, arguing that jury trial remains one of the most important counterweights to the concentration of state power.
He said, “Juries do more than find facts. They embody public confidence. They guard against institutional complacency. They remind us that justice is not merely something administered to the people, but something done with them.”
Dr Shastri-Hurst urged the Government to pause its plans, publish the evidence underpinning its proposals, and focus instead on fixing the underlying capacity failures that continue to undermine the criminal justice system.
