Justice Secretary Alex Norris will drop plans for a Crown Court bench division that would have allowed judge-alone trials for many either-way offences likely to attract sentences of up to three years, the Ministry of Justice said Sunday, opting instead to fast-track wider magistrates reforms while 80,829 cases remain stuck in the Crown Court backlog.
The partial U-turn arrives days before the Courts and Tribunals Bill returns to the Commons for report stage on 13 October. Norris said he had heard the "strength of feeling" against expanding judge-only Crown trials and would concentrate on efficiencies that do not require creating a new judicial tier.
What stays in the Bill
Government lawyers still intend to remove defendants' automatic right to elect a Crown Court jury for some either-way offences, letting magistrates decide whether a case belongs in the lower or higher court. Serious financial crime cases may still be heard by judges alone where a presiding judge certifies a jury would be unsuitable—a narrower lane than the scrapped bench division.
Victims' groups welcomed the jury U-turn but warned that magistrates reforms must not become a speed bump that sacrifices scrutiny. Defence solicitors who protested outside the Royal Courts of Justice last month said any loss of jury trials would have eroded a centuries-old safeguard; Norris's statement quoted the same principle while insisting backlog reduction cannot wait.
Backlog politics
Nearly a third of outstanding Crown cases have waited more than a year, MoJ statistics show. Ministers argue that setting up a bench division would have consumed administrative capacity better spent digitising evidence bundles and expanding night courts. Opposition parties called the reversal a victory for the Bar and Law Society campaigns, but they demanded published timelines for backlog cuts rather than slogans.
Lord Leveson's two-part review of criminal courts will receive a full government response in the coming weeks, potentially adding further amendments before the Bill's final Commons votes. Norris promised a statutory commitment to an independent review of how structural reforms affect ethnic minorities and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
What happens next
Commons debate on 13 October will now focus on magistrates' sentencing powers and digital procedure rules rather than jury composition. Crown Court staff, already stretched, want funding guarantees for interpreters and vulnerable witness suites—not another reorganisation chart.
For defendants and victims alike, the metric is waiting time, not press-release adjectives. Norris bought peace with the legal profession by scrapping the bench division; he still owes the public a calendar that shows when 80,829 cases become hearings with dates, not queue numbers.
Bar leaders said they would scrutinise the revised Bill line by line when the text is reprinted for report stage, and constituency MPs on both sides expect constituency mail about waiting times to spike regardless of the jury outcome. Norris's team will need those MPs armed with data, not adjectives, when they defend the government's record on access to justice.