Has David Lammy been watching Judge Judy?

[Spartacus]

BBC News - Deputy PM David Lammy set to announce jury trial reforms - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg1q62jmv0o

Edited 11 hours ago by Spartacus

[Sue]

But "expected to back down on plans to scrap most jury trials"

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec/02/david-lammy-proposals-jury-trials?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Edited 9 hours ago by Sue

[vladi]

If Lammy had a jury trial for incompetence he would be convicted beyond any reasonable doubt.

[Spartacus]

Is it the lack of people doing jury service, or lack of judges and court rooms that slows down trials ? 

Personally I think its the latter but wjay doni know ? 

 

[alice]

Something has to change when young rape victims have to wait years for a trial. 
 

[HeadNun]

16 minutes ago, Spartacus said:

Is it the lack of people doing jury service, or lack of judges and court rooms that slows down trials ? 

Personally I think its the latter but wjay doni know ? 

 

I think it's lack of avail courtrooms, poor facilities, equipment not working, defendants not turning up... a whole range of problems caused my chronic underfunding. 

[Spartacus]

20 minutes ago, alice said:

Something has to change when young rape victims have to wait years for a trial. 
 

No one is doubting that Alice, but is this the right way ? 

[Sephiroth]

3 hours ago, Sue said:

But "expected to back down on plans to scrap most jury trials"

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec/02/david-lammy-proposals-jury-trials?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Not looking great so far 

I don’t rate Lammy that much, I think people on here have touched on the many many problems years of underfunding the justice system have made us reach this point   - but these proposals would be problematic even if they were effective in tackling the problem.   Which - based on anyone I know involved in the legal system - they won’t 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/dec/02/david-lammy-courts-law-starmer-labour-reeves-budget-obr-uk-politics-live-news-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[Spartacus]

Could this be his inspiration.

He is the LAW 

[Sephiroth]

Is that a McManus Dredd drawing? He was great 

but on topic - it’s an overreach which takes too much and gives too little 

[jazzer]

 

[Sephiroth]

I know we are off topic here 

 

but the Stallone 95 movie is awful 

the Dredd movie from 2012 is fantastic 

[alice]

29 minutes ago, Spartacus said:

No one is doubting that Alice, but is this the right way ? 

The prisons are overcrowded. The court system is in complete disarray and getting worse then there’s the barrister problem, the money problem.

would we want to pay more tax to fund this broken system?  
 

Anyway, what would be a better way?

This at least is a small tiny start

[Sephiroth]

You pay tax to fix problems 

you underfund stuff my faking tax cuts and the breakdown of the system is what you get

there are no cheap or easy fixes. It will take money and time - and people lack patience 

[vladi]

1 hour ago, Spartacus said:

Is it the lack of people doing jury service, or lack of judges and court rooms that slows down trials ? 

 

 

Courts are in session from 10am to mid-day then 2pm to 4pm. Four hours a day with a two hour lunch is probably the cause.

[HeadNun]

10 minutes ago, alice said:

The prisons are overcrowded. The court system is in complete disarray and getting worse then there’s the barrister problem, the money problem.

would we want to pay more tax to fund this broken system?  
 

Anyway, what would be a better way?

This at least is a small tiny start

In an ideal world, yes, more tax would be directed to the justice system. Because a lot of suspects don't get a fair trial and wrongly convicted. Often they'll have a long list of previous, so police are picking the low hanging fruit. And because legal aid solicitors and barristers' pay is now so anaemic, they simply don't have the time to work a case and defend it properly. So you probably see more people behind bars than there should be. 

It started with Brown and then got way worse with Cameron, when he essentially tried to turn legal aid firms into giant call centres and put the contracts out to tender. Even since then, the system gets squeezed more every year. 

[Sue]

4 hours ago, vladi said:

If Lammy had a jury trial for incompetence he would be convicted beyond any reasonable doubt.

Why do you think he is incompetent?

[HeadNun]

Because this is a really stupid, backwards idea, and you don't need to be a barrister or lawyer to understand why. It's just a token move, to make himself and his department relevant, which will improve precisely nothing. 

[malumbu]

Perhaps have a look at the review first before making such a judgement.  Maybe you could do better, please do contact Number 10.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/686be85d81dd8f70f5de3c1f/35.49_MOJ_Ind_Review_Criminal_Courts_v8b_FINAL_WEB.pdf

 

[Sue]

1 hour ago, HeadNun said:

Because this is a really stupid, backwards idea, and you don't need to be a barrister or lawyer to understand why. It's just a token move, to make himself and his department relevant, which will improve precisely nothing. 

Is this a reply to my question to Vladi?

Could you be more specific about your reasons for saying it's "stupid" and "backwards", instead of making vague generalisations?

[Sephiroth]

This might help, sue 

 

https://thesecretbarrister.com/2025/12/02/abolishing-trial-by-jury-why-is-the-government-overlooking-the-obvious/

[Sue]

28 minutes ago, Sephiroth said:

This might help, sue 

 

https://thesecretbarrister.com/2025/12/02/abolishing-trial-by-jury-why-is-the-government-overlooking-the-obvious/

Surely there should be people below David Lammy's level briefing him on stuff like this?

[CPR Dave]

I happen to think jury trials are a good idea and the government should be spending efforts making them more efficient and bringing them to court more quickly.

However, criminal barristers have a huge conflict of self interest in lengthy delayed jury trials and I've not seen any of them mention that when they argue against these new proposals. 

 

[Sephiroth]

15 minutes ago, Sue said:

Surely there should be people below David Lammy's level briefing him on stuff like this?

Well, this is it isn’t  it? 
 

this does see to be an ongoing problem since oooh I’m gonna say 2016. For some reason 

governments playing to a populist right wing media without foundations in reality, all in the hope of a supportive headline that will never come 

[HeadNun]

19 minutes ago, CPR Dave said:

I happen to think jury trials are a good idea and the government should be spending efforts making them more efficient and bringing them to court more quickly.

However, criminal barristers have a huge conflict of self interest in lengthy delayed jury trials and I've not seen any of them mention that when they argue against these new proposals. 

 

I'm not sure that's true. I don't know how they bill (and I might be wrong) but I doubt they get paid each time they turn up at court and a witness or defendant fails to show, or the printer's broken, or  the loos have flooded, or whatever. I think most remaining criminal barristers and solicitors these days (now there's no money in it) genuinely care about the justice system and would like to see trials coming to court quicker, but not like this.

Plus, I don't see how these measures will help - they won't suddenly magic up all the courtrooms the system demands (that prev govts shut down), and do we even have enough mags to pick up all the extra non jury cases that will arise? Picking and panelling juries isn't what's causing the delay in trials going to court.