The UK government must end its attack on jury trials

The current government came to power with a manifesto commitment to restore confidence in the criminal justice system to its highest levels. It came as a surprise to many, then, when the Government launched proposals for a radical restriction of jury trials, as part of a set of wider reforms[1] to the criminal justice system intended to speed up the judicial process and address the disastrous backlog of cases that has built up in recent years.

The crisis in the criminal justice system is well documented[2] and everyone agrees it must be tackled. The present situation, in which over 80,000 Crown Court cases are sitting in a backlog,[3] is unsustainable and harms victims and defendants alike. However, Amnesty International UK agrees with the many critics of the government’s proposals that attacking jury trials is not the solution to these very real problems. In our briefing on the Courts and Tribunals Bill, we have set out our deep concerns about what the government are proposing to do, which we believe will have a serious impact on the fair trial rights of defendants, and ultimately their right to liberty.

If you were to look at the government’s human rights assessment for the Bill, you would be forgiven for thinking that there are no human rights questions to answer about what they are doing. The European Convention on Human Rights does not require jury trials to meet fair trial standards, we are repeatedly told, as plenty of other countries around Europe operate justice systems without a jury being involved. But the proposals in the Bill are not to adopt a whole new justice system. They are a dilution of the quality of justice in the current system. It is not good enough to say that they are acceptable because other countries do not have jury trials at all. Justice systems are made up of different institutional arrangements, checks and balances; they all have their flaws, and all are, or at least should be, striving for improvements to better protect human rights. Instead, these provisions risk making matters worse for human rights rather than better, by choosing to extend and entrench the known flaws in the justice system we have and to cut away some of the most fundamental protections that alleviate them.

In particular, these reforms will have a damaging effect on efforts to combat racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. The evidence is clear that in a number of important respects racialised minority defendants have disproportionately worse outcomes and are treated more harshly by the justice system than their white counterparts.[4] Juries are one of the rare exceptions to this rule and act as an important safety-valve against systemic racism in our justice system. Removing access to juries for the majority of cases would be a major backwards step in ongoing efforts to reform and combat these problems.

The proposals also raise particular concerns in protest cases. As AIUK has been raising the alarm about for several years now, there has been a major legislative crackdown on protest in this country, in which new criminal offences have been created, penalties for offences have been increased and legal defences have been removed. Juries have played a historic role in protecting protesters, and the right to protest, from excessive state reaction to their activism. It is perhaps no coincidence that the proposed restrictions will target precisely these kind of cases.

With a change in leadership on the horizon and much talk of, of ‘resets’[5] and promises of a new direction,[6] we are urging the next Prime Minister to drop these plans immediately. A different way forward to tackle the backlog is needed. Human rights require a justice system that works and is sustainable, but that cannot be at the cost of fairness, or progress towards the better protection of those rights.

[1] UK Parliament: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/4083

[2] BBC Online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1evxve8q7jo

[3] gov.co.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2026

[4] Administrative Data Research UK, 'Ethnic inequalities in the criminal justice system': https://www.adruk.org/our-mission/our-impact/article/ethnic-inequalities-in-the-criminal-justice-system-2/

[5] The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/09/burnhams-apology-over-gaza-marks-reset-moment-as-labour-seeks-to-win-back-progressive-voters

[6] The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/08/andy-burnham-labour-mps-party-discipline-stifle-debate