Page: Jury trial plans are a travesty
A member of the Legal Services Board has resigned so that she can speak out against the government’s proposals to curb jury trials.
Flora Page KC, who practises from 23ES and was heavily involved in acting for subpostmasters caught up in the Post Office Horizon scandal, stressed that her decision had nothing to do with the oversight regulator.
“I have the greatest regard for the members of the board and the excellent staff,” she wrote to David Lammy, the Lord Chancellor and justice secretary.
“I am resigning because I need to be able to speak freely against the Courts and Tribunals Bill, and the radical incursions it will make into the ancient right to trial by jury.
“Until now, I have tried to hold the line of opposing the policy without speaking out against the ministers or the ministry responsible for this travesty.
“The Legal Services Board is sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, and although independent of the ministry, it is committed to working together in an open, trust-based way towards the furtherance of the ‘regulatory objectives’, which include ‘supporting the constitutional principle of the rule of law’.
“However, after watching you and Sarah Sackman KC MP in the House of Commons yesterday, I am unable to continue to work in that way.
“Everything I have done in my career has been aimed at upholding the constitutional principle of the rule of law, and I cannot stand by silently and let the Lord Chancellor rip the heart out of that constitutional principle.”
Ms Page criticised the lack of public consultation on the proposals and just five days of scrutiny in the bill’s committee stage in the House of Commons, “despite there being no manifesto commitment to support it”.
She said: “The legal profession has made it perfectly plain how controversial the provisions on jury trial are. More than 3,200 lawyers signed an open letter to the prime minister to drive that point home.
“It is clear to me that this bill is being rushed through Parliament to give its opponents as little time as possible to organise.”
The barrister talked about how the criminal justice system “has been largely abandoned” over the past 20 years. “We can still trust juries, but every other part of the system is falling apart… This is the result of successive governments failing to prioritise justice.
“Instead of recognising that the rule of law is the foundation of everything that we hold dear, it has become something we sell as part of ‘UK plc’. Rich oligarchs or multinational companies are welcome to come and settle their disputes here for a princely sum, but if ordinary people report a crime, the chances of justice are slim to none.”
Ms Page asserted that jury trial did not cause the huge backlog of Crown Court cases, rather, it was the restriction on sitting days.
“I am sorry to say that I believe the backlog is a cynical cover, something that the officials have worked on intentionally to give you and Ms Sackman the ammunition you feel you need to take aim at jury trial. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
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