David Lammy’s plans to introduce judge-only criminal trials in England and Wales will save less than 2% of time in crown courts, the Institute for Government (IFG) has said.
In a report that casts doubt on the ability of the changes, which will slash the number of jury trials to achieve their goal of wiping out the courts’ backlog, the thinktank described the gains from judge-only trials as “marginal”.
It said while the number of jury trials would fall by about 50%, there would probably be only a 7 to 10% reduction in total time taken in the courtroom as a result of the entire package of changes, with judge-only trials only contributing to a fraction of that.
Cassia Rowland, who authored the report said: “The government’s proposed reforms to jury trials will not fix the problems in the crown court. The time savings from judge-only trials will be marginal at best, amounting to less than 2% of crown court time.
“Hearing more trials in magistrates’ courts is a stronger proposal and would potentially save more time, but the government has yet to set out specific details of how it would do that and the estimates are highly uncertain. For a bigger and faster impact on the crown court backlog, the government should instead focus on how to drive up productivity across the criminal courts, investing in the workforce and technology required for the courts to operate more efficiently.”
The plans have already faced a significant backlash from the legal profession as well as dozens of Labour MPs and peers from across the upper chamber. The report said judge-only trials “are likely to be highly controversial and to damage public confidence in the criminal justice system”.
Brian Leveson’s government-commissioned review recommended a single judge sitting with two people in a new “bench division” of the crown court but Lammy scrapped the lay element.
The government said it had done its own impact assessment of the changes but would not publish it until the bill containing the proposals was ready.
The IFG said that while the proposals would reduce demand on the crown court, in the number of cases and the total amount of time it takes to hear them, the reductions are “not substantial” for three reasons. It said a lot of court time is spent handling other types of cases and hearings and, second, that trials moving to the bench division or magistrates would be the least serious cases in the crown court, which on average only take half as long to hear as the most serious cases.
Finally, while judge-only trials are estimated to be 20% quicker than jury trials, they would only account for about a quarter of crown court trials, and have an “extremely marginal” impact, according to the report.
In contrast with the planned changes, improving productivity “enjoys broad support across the sector and could begin much faster”, said Rowland. She said the crown court was hearing almost 20% fewer hours per sitting day so far in 2025/26 than it was in 2016/17. “If the crown court had got through an equivalent number of cases per day in 2024 as in 2016, the case backlog would have fallen by at least a few thousand cases. Instead, it grew by nearly 8,000 (10%),” the report said.
Mark Evans, the president of the Law Society of England and Wales, said: “If the UK government is serious about tackling the appalling backlogs in the criminal courts, its focus must be on the investment and reforms that will make the most difference.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We disagree with these numbers. Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review concluded reform could, conservatively, reduce case times by at least 20% and judges in Canada have said in practice it reduced case time by up to half.
“Victims are facing an unacceptably long wait for justice after years of delays in our courts. That’s why – as this report says – only a combination of bold reforms, record levels of investment and action to tackle inefficiencies across the system will get victims the swift justice they deserve.”
