A potential government U-turn on changes to jury trials risks breaking a justice system on the brink of collapse, the new victims’ commissioner for England and Wales has warned.
The justice secretary, David Lammy, must face down MPs and the legal profession over proposals to reduce the number of jury trials or “we will not have victims coming into the system”, said Claire Waxman.
Waxman said she was “disappointed” that the changes to jury trials had generated more “noise” than other plans to release prisoners recalled to prison early and abolish most short prison sentences. Changing in the sentencing bill risked undermining a key Labour manifesto promise to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, she argued.
Waxman said she understood the strength of feeling in the legal profession over jury trials, but said “an obstructive and unhelpful” discourse could plunge the system into deeper chaos.
On Monday, the Guardian reported that proposals to limit jury trials could be watered down after a backlash, but Waxman said any U-turn risked collapsing the system and she “didn’t think the government could do it”.
Waxman added that critics could “shout and scream” and hope for a U-turn, but there was no other viable proposal to drastically reduce the backlog. “If you row back on this, we will see a backlog of 100,000, of 125,000,” she said. “That is a public safety issue. Victims will not stay six, seven years in the justice process. The justice system will no longer function, it will collapse, it is already on the brink.”
Lammy is understood to be pushing ahead with plans – proposed by Sir Brian Leveson – in their current form, including proposals for a new criminal court where judges will hear cases on their own, magistrates-only hearings for offences that carry a maximum sentence of two years or less, and judge-only trials for complex fraud cases.
Waxman added that court backlogs, along with crumbling court rooms and trials adjourned on the day they were due to be heard were having a “devastating impact” on victims.
“When a victim tells you that the delays have pushed them to consider taking their own life, you have to wake up and think this can’t continue,” she said. “This isn’t humane. We have to do something differently.”
The victims’ commissioner said crumbling courts had leaks, problems with heating and witness rooms that had left her feeling “embarrassed”. Asked if she was proud of the justice system in England and Wales, she said: “No. I’m proud of the people who work in it. Many are working beyond what they’re being paid for, but they’re doing it because they care so deeply.”
Waxman also argued that the sentencing bill, which aims to reduce dire prison overcrowding by rereleasing the vast majority of offenders recalled to prison after 56 days and scrapping of most short prison sentences, would probably result in the government failing to lower the rate of femicide in the UK if safeguards were not put in place.
“If we are releasing more people from prison, or we suspend short sentences, that does work against halving violence against women and girls. That’s a reality. It does undermine it,” she said.
Waxman said she was seeking urgent clarification from ministers this week over fears that plans to radically reform sentencing could leave victims of domestic abuse in danger.
“There are measures in that bill that really alarm me from a public safety perspective,” she said. “That bill has not been brought forward with public safety at the heart of it. It’s been brought forward because [the government] had no choice […] There are risks in that bill to public safety, in my opinion.”
Waxman, herself a victim of stalking over a two-decade period, said short sentences also provided a “critical window of respite” for domestic abuse and stalking victims. The government has said the bill will contain exemptions so a judge can give a short sentence if there is a breach of a court order or a risk of harm.
Waxman said she had seen “first-hand” the commitment of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, to tackle violence against women and girls and said the government had inherited crises in prisons and courts, but she echoed the concerns of campaigners, who warned that the government’s VAWG, which was launched in December, was “seriously underfunded”.
Her work was also being hampered by the small size of the victims’ commissioner’s office, which would struggle to carry out its statutory powers to make sure agencies such as the police and Crown Prosecution Service were providing legal rights to survivors of crime set out in the victims code, she said.
Asked if there was enough money in the strategy, which is focused on prevention and tackling misogyny in boys, Waxman said: “Not that I can see, and that’s why I want to meet with ministers. Funding will be critical to deliver this ambition.”
