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Order. Order.

Hello, I'm Sean Curran, and this is today in Parliament from BBC Radio 4 for Thursday,

the 27th of November, when a justice minister said no final decision had been taken on proposals

to restrict the right to trial by jury in England and Wales.

But let me be clear. Jury trials will always be a cornerstone of British justice.

A day on from the budget, the Conservatives have bad news for Rachel Reeves.

She is apparently the least popular Chancellor, according to the polls, in the history of polling on that question.

And a Liberal Democrat is concerned after the BBC removes a line about Donald Trump

from this year's Reith lecture after taking legal advice.

If the national broadcaster can't air robust and defensible claims, even in a series of lectures

designed to spark debate on contemporary issues, what hope is there for any part of our free press

to effectively challenge power?

But first, this week it emerged that the Justice Secretary, David Lame, was considering

scrapping jury trials in England and Wales for all but

the most serious offences. An internal government briefing paper suggested that only defendants

charged with rape, murder, manslaughter and what it called public interest offences would be

guaranteed to have their case tried by a jury. All other offences would be dealt with by a judge,

either sitting alone or with two magistrates. The proposals were drawn up as part of efforts to tackle the

backlog of court cases. The Conservatives have criticised the plans. The Shadow Justice Secretary,

Robert Jenrick, called them an outrage.

The Labour Party just don't think ordinary people are up to it.

...