- Justice Secretary Alex Norris has scrapped radical plans to drastically reduce jury trials across England and Wales in a bid to tackle court backlogs.
- The proposal to restrict jury trials had been introduced by former justice secretary David Lammy under Sir Keir Starmer and faced widespread backlash from MPs, lawyers, and campaigners.
- Under the revised policy, judge-alone trials without a jury will now be limited strictly to specific fraud and financial offences.
- Further changes will remove the automatic right for defendants facing minor offences to choose a Crown Court jury trial, transferring decision-making power to the courts.
- While legal organisations welcomed the decision to preserve jury trials, concerns remain that shifting thousands of cases to magistrates' courts will exacerbate existing delays.
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