Robert Jenrick. Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP

The justice secretary is facing accusations of hypocrisy over his proposed scrapping of jury trials, after his Tory opposite number Robert Jenrick said it was a system David Lammy once ‘proudly defended’ before coming to power.

Jenrick stated, “Now [Lammy is] in office, he’s getting rid of them in virtually every case. “Scrapping this pillar of our constitution because of the administrative failure to reduce the court backlog is a disgrace.”

News broke on Tuesday that in order to deal with the crumbling criminal justice system, Lammy is proposing to only have jury trials for murder, rape or manslaughter cases, the rest to be heard only by a judge.

As of June 2025, the criminal case backlog in the Crown Court for England and Wales reached a rec

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