Should Jury Trials Be Scrapped? - The Verdict on Jury Reform
The Trial
The Crime Desk
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After David Lammy yesterday unveiled his proposals to scrap thousands of jury trials Caroline and Liz have the verdict from one of the country’s top barristers. Chris Henley KC said the Justice Secretary’s plans showed “contempt for ordinary people.” He said the issues in the court system which cause unacceptable delays are “embarrassing” but the jury system was not one of the problems. He also said trust in the justice system would be undermined.
The Trial series uses actors and some voices generated by AI. Their words are taken as verbatim from the official court transcript.
Click here to sign up to The Crime Desk's weekly newsletter.
It's free and packed with exclusive interviews, expert insight, and gripping deep dive investigations from across the world.
A Daily Mail production.
Seriously Popular.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome to the trial UK. I'm Caroline Cheatham. And I'm Liz Holbe. So we're back again, Liz, |
| 0:13.7 | because we've got sort of part two, if you like, of our special bonus episode on what's happening to the jury trial system in our country. |
| 0:26.0 | We brought that special episode on Monday after the sort of leaks, if you like, in the times from |
| 0:32.1 | last week about what David Lammy was going to announce or may announce in relation to scrapping many, many jury trials. |
| 0:41.0 | And yesterday in the House of Commons, he stood up and he said exactly what he was going to do. |
| 0:46.9 | So we wanted to get back on just to outline some of that. |
| 0:50.4 | And in essence, Liz, it was a bit of a rowback from what the Times had reported a few |
| 0:57.1 | days ago. They'd reported that many, many more jury trials would be scrapped. That's not the case, |
| 1:04.1 | but it's still a fundamental change that he is announcing. We'll go through a couple of them before we come to our interview, |
| 1:12.3 | but effectively we're talking about anyone who's facing charges for a crime that may be a |
| 1:19.7 | prison sentence of three years or less will now not have a right to a jury trial. |
| 1:30.4 | That's an awful lot of trials. That's an awful lot of cases because it could include assault, burglary, any of those things that are genuinely commonplace |
| 1:37.6 | in our society. That currently, if you want to explain how it works, Liz, currently that's called |
| 1:43.7 | an either way |
| 1:44.6 | offence and people can elect at the magistrate's court to say, well, I'd like this to be dealt with |
| 1:52.3 | in this way and that's what's changing. Yeah, so they're called either way offences, which |
| 1:57.7 | basically means that if you're accused of a crime and you appear at a magistrate's |
| 2:02.9 | court, you can decide whether to have your case heard by either three lay magistrates or a |
| 2:10.1 | district judge, or you can elect to have a trial at a crown court. Now, David Lamy talked about people gaming the system, |
| 2:19.7 | and what he meant by that is people pleading not guilty and opting for a jury trial. In the |
| 2:25.3 | hope that it will take ages and ages and ages for the case to reach court, the victim might |
| 2:29.5 | decide that they don't want to be involved any longer, or essentially they'll be out on bail for longer, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Crime Desk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Crime Desk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.