Keir Starmer is facing fresh calls to U-turn on Labour’s court reforms after it was revealed how he previously agreed that axing jury trials led to wrongful convictions.
Under Government plans, jury trials in England and Wales will be limited to cases with a likely sentence of three years or more.
Meanwhile, cases with a likely sentence of three years or less will only be heard by a single crown court judge, without a jury.
Magistrates’ powers will also be boosted so they can hand down sentences of up to 18 months’ imprisonment, up from 12 months currently.
The Government has argued the reforms – being spearheaded by Justice Secretary David Lammy – are urgently needed to deal with the huge backlog in crown court cases, despite a backlash from top barristers.
The Prime Minister is also facing the threat of a huge revolt in the House of Commons to the Courts and Tribunals Bill, with 100 Labour MPs having already failed to back the legislation.
It has now emerged how Sir Keir previously appeared to hold a different view on jury trials.
A report he helped write in 1992 is said to have found that scrapping jury trials led to wrongful convictions in Northern Ireland in the 1990s.
Keir Starmer, pictured watching Arsenal vs Everton on Saturday, is facing fresh calls to U-turn on Labour’s court reforms
A report the Prime Minister helped to write in 1992 is said to have found that scrapping jury trials led to wrongful convictions in Northern Ireland in the 1990s
At the time, Sir Keir was secretary of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and led a 14-strong delegation of lawyers to Belfast in 1991.
A report subsequently published by the Haldane Society, uncovered by The Telegraph, found that removing juries from Troubles-era crown court trials meant cases were ‘failing to secure reliable convictions based on properly tested evidence’.
‘The state of the law is such that it enables wrongful convictions to occur in the absence of any procedural or judicial error,’ it added.
Senior Tory MP Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, said the PM ‘should read the report he helped craft and stop his attack on jury trials’.
‘The report contains many of the arguments that critics in Parliament and in the legal profession have made against the Bill,’ he added of Labour’s planned reforms.
‘Judge-only trials remove vital protections from defendants and place additional burdens and scrutiny on judges.’
The Haldane Society’s 1992 report is said to have concluded that Diplock courts in Northerh Ireland, introduced to try serious and terrorism-related crimes without juries, reduced opportunity for cross-examination.
‘The examination and cross-examination will be reduced, questioning cut, that the issues will not be so well rehearsed or argued as would be required in front of a jury, nor will witnesses be so vigorously tested or their credibility so thoroughly assessed and, in short, the challenging role of the defence is significantly curtailed,’ the report said.
‘Under such circumstances, it would appear to be more difficult to raise a reasonable doubt.’
The authors are also said to have noted an unusually high conviction rate of more than 90 per cent in Diplock courts.
Labour MP Karl Turner, who has led backbench opposition to the Government’s court reforms, said: ‘Like David Lammy, the PM knows full well that doing away with jury trials in serious criminal cases, that affords the guilty three years’ incarceration, is unjust, unworkable, unpopular and unnecessary.
‘The tragedy is that Keir Starmer as PM knows the cost of jury trials but he is prepared to ignore the value of this 800-year-old right of those accused and prosecuted by the state.’
He added that the report on Diplock courtsfound that removing jury trials led to ‘a clear injustice’.
A Government spokesman said: ‘We must recognise that our justice system has changed – technology means there is more evidence than ever before, and trials for more complex cases, such as those involving sex offences or online fraud are taking longer to go in front of a jury.
‘Our changes will prioritise jury trials for the most serious cases, helping victims get fairer and faster justice.’
