A Labour minister has defended plans to remove juries in some cases by claiming that judges will do a ‘good job’ because they have had diversity training.
Following claims by Labour MPs that judges could be prejudiced, Baroness Levitt said she had ‘confidence in a professional judiciary’.
The Lords justice minister told peers that the ‘judiciary is becoming more diverse’ in response to concerns about the lack of diversity among judges.
‘It is not where we want it to be but it is getting there,’ she said.
‘What it does have is extensive training in matters to do with issues of diversity, fairness and disproportionate impacts on particular sectors of the population.’
Her remarks come after a major backlash against plans proposed by Justice Secretary David Lammy to scrap jury trials for some offences.
On Tuesday, Labour figures warned that the lack of diversity among judges could lead to those from minority or poorer backgrounds being discriminated against.
Former Labour grandee Dianne Abbott said the ‘entire House’ was concerned that members of the public ‘will undoubtedly suffer miscarriages of justice if the right to trial is curtailed’.
Labour MP Clive Efford told the Commons that said he feared that restricting trial by jury ‘will put a certain class of people in judgment over the rest of us.’
His fellow Labour MP Stella Creasy added: ‘It is difficult to see how this measure – with all the challenges it may bring for justice and fairness, particularly for some of our minority communities – will address that backlog.’
Speaking in the Lords on Tuesday night, Baroness Levitt, a barrister who previously worked under Sir Keir Starmer, defended the plans.
She told peers: ‘I have been a criminal barrister for many decades.
‘When I practised as a criminal barrister, I too felt that any attempt to touch what happens with jury trials was fundamentally wrong.
‘However, I then became a judge in the crown court and saw what was actually happening.
‘Every judge in the crown court up and down this country will have experienced sitting with other judges at lunchtime and saying “I cannot believe that this case I am trying here and now is actually in the Crown Court. It shouldn’t be here.”
‘We are not sacrificing jury trials – of course we are not.
‘It has never been that every criminal case was tried by a jury – 90per cent are currently tried in the magistrates’ courts. The question is, where do we draw the line?’
She was responding to former Labour minister Lord Boateng who said that juries were the best safeguard against an ‘overmighty and oppressive state’.
He told peers: ‘At the end of the day, are not random and conscientious people taken off the street the best safeguards of our civil liberties against an overmighty and oppressive state?
‘If any one of us here were to be charged with a criminal offence, would we not rather put our trust and confidence in a jury rather than in a state appointee? Are not juries the best way of linking ordinary people to our criminal justice system?’
Under the proposed changes, jury trials will be scrapped for crimes that carry a likely sentence of less than three years.
The most serious offences such as murder and rape will continue to be dealt with by juries, along with lesser ‘either-way’ offences that carry longer prison terms.
Baroness Levitt was principal legal adviser to Sir Keir when he was director of public prosecutions and she oversaw the Crown Prosecution Service’s review of its handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
The PM nominated her for a peerage earlier this year.
