MINISTRY OF JUSTICE SPEAKS WITH FORKED TONGUE ON APPEALS, BACKLOG AND JURIES

The most far reaching changes in our legal system in a generation have been proposed by the Secretary of State for Justice henceforth in this post to be referred to as "MOJ". Statisticians and others will be following their own political preferences and prejudices to paint them in their desired hue. This post is written by a  long retired magistrate and views the whole scheme of things as he has from the  beginning of this  in 2010(  https://amagistratesdiaries.blogspot.com) from the public point of view with the occasional volleys of common sense, incredulity and sceptism.

In recent weeks the Metropolitan Police have revealed that until recently their vetting processes failed insofar as hundreds of applicants secured positions when they should have been eliminated by the Met`s filtering procedure which failed.  In all probability this disastrous outcome was the rush to increase numbers after the wholesale reduction in police numbers owing to Austerity. The recruitment of magistrates has followed a similar pattern.  The application form was published here on 25th May 2017.  In short the vetting system employed character and eligibility questions, Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, pre-appointment checks and assessment at interview stage.  For an unpaid responsible public position it`s little wonder that recruitement is below published expectations. Although half the nation`s magistrates courts have been closed since 2010 the workload in general terms has not. There are now about half the number of magistrates since then to deal with Britain`s lower levels of criminality.  There were 373,084 open cases at the end of last year. 

It has been many years since the MOJ published details of appeals from the magistrates courts to the crown court.  MOJ announced "changes". There has been no follow up announcement of what restrictions are going to be enacted, for as certain as night follows day the MOJ is not going to make it easier and simpler for such appeals to be made.  Currently every sentence and/or conviction at the lower court can be appealed within 21 days and every magistrates court has the paperwork immediately available for offenders when they leave the courtroom. Indeed my personal practice was to make this information available in open court after every trial when appropriate.  The information that is available makes interesting reading. 

The last year for which transparent figures for appeals was 2023 when there were  5,968 appeals from magistrates courts to the crown court (across conviction and sentence) out of well over a million magistrates’ cases total.  In 2024 there were about 121,500 cases received.  In the first half of 2025 there were 60,500.  Legal reporting (e.g., The Times) has quoted that over 40% of appeals against verdicts and 47% of sentence succeed in crown court. In 2021 during Covid appeals against magistrates’ decisions accounted for about 5 % of crown court caseload implying appeal numbers of only a few thousand per year at that time.   

The open crown court caseload was 79,619 by Q3 2025; a record high. It is indisputable that such appeals as above have a negligible effect on the overall logjam in crown courts and  they have not increased during the backlog crisis. Reducing appeal rights would affect thousands not tens of thousands of cases  and deliver negligible time savings. 

With regard to the proposals to reduce trial by jury specifically, cases with likely sentences under about three years and some complex cases would go to judge only hearings.  Consequently  magistrates would get greater sentencing powers so more cases stay in the magistrates’ courts, further reducing crown court demand. We have been told that those changes  would contribute to clearing the backlog by the late 2020s or early 2030s.  However The Institute for Government estimates that limiting jury trials would reduce crown court hearing time by only about 7–8 % overall and judge only trials would save just 1.5–2.5 % of court time on their own.

Those whose knowledge far exceeds mine have made clear that the backlog is due to:-

1. Court capacity limits (fewer judges, lawyers, courtrooms than needed.

2. Underfunding over many years.

3. High numbers of ineffective hearings (due to witness/defence unavailability, poor case preparation etc.).

The bottom line is the effect on the size of the backlog would be modest if the proposals were implemented. 

Changes which would improve matters are depicted below:- 

In simple terms:-

Jury-trial reform government estimates would improve matters by ~8%)

Extra judges would improve matters by  ~20%

More sitting days would improve matters by~30%

Abolishing jury trials would deliver the smallest gain while increasing judges and sitting days would do far more to reduce the backlog  without removing a constitutional safeguard.  So we are left with the obvious question; why has this government put so much effort into this proposal?  We continually are told it`s a government and justice system for victims.  Apart from the ideal that Justice is supposed to be impartial is not the underlying motive to be seen to be doing something and in its wake to abolish juries per se?  

Socialists always want more control over the lives of citizens.  By reforming magistrates courts sentencing powers [perhaps itself a temporary measure bearing in mind the ups and downs in available sentences of the last four years] it could pave the road to only District Judges sitting or with two magistrate wingers. Be that as it may the facts show that the MOJ is being less than truthful and as native Americans discovered about post Civil War treaties with the US government:- they speak with forked tongue.