Tim Crosland gave evidence.

We will now hear evidence from Plan B. We have until 6.44 pm for this panel. Could you please briefly introduce yourself for the record?

Tim Crosland:

Good afternoon, I am Tim Crosland. I was previously a Government lawyer, working mainly on criminal justice issues. I am now at the climate justice charity Plan B, and I also helped establish the civil liberties movement Defend Our Juries in 2023. That was before this Bill was born, but in anticipation that it would not be long before legislation like this came along that threatened to remove trial by jury from protest cases.

Q Thank you, Tim. I am Kieran Mullan, the Shadow Justice Minister. To pick up on your final remark, what was it that made you think this issue could be coming down the track?

Tim Crosland:

There had been a pattern of jury acquittals in protest cases. In April 2021, the Shell six, who had spray painted “Shell Lies” on Shell headquarters, were acquitted by a jury. In January 2022, the Colston four, who toppled the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol harbour, were acquitted by a jury. In November 2022, members of Palestine Action, who had defaced Elbit Systems—suppliers of drones to the Israel Defence Forces—were acquitted by a jury. In January 2023, members of Insulate Britain were acquitted by a jury for blocking roads. It goes on, and we were seeing the reaction to that. It was nothing to do with the efficiency of the courts; it was the reactions from companies like Shell and Elbit, the meetings with Ministers, and the call, “How do we stop this happening because this is deeply embarrassing?”

Q To be frank with you, I was unhappy with the acquittals in all the cases that you have given examples of, so I am not necessarily sympathetic to the aim that you are putting forward. How important do you think it is that the system allows someone like me to be frustrated and not agree with what the jury end up doing or with what the judges and the establishment might think is right, versus what ordinary members of the public do, as a check and balance against people like me?

Tim Crosland:

It is a vital component of democracy. The classic example that comes up a lot is Clive Ponting. This is going back few decades—I remember it. In the 1980s, he was a civil servant who heard an account of what happened to the General Belgrano being presented to the public and Parliament that he knew was not true. He knew that the Belgrano was driving away from the British forces when it was sunk, so he leaked that information and was prosecuted for breach of the Official Secrets Act. The judge said, “You have no defence in law.” If it was down to the judge, Clive Ponting would have been convicted as a criminal and jailed.

The jury saw somebody who had acted to get good information to the public, so they disregarded the judge’s ruling—a principle known as jury equity—and Clive Ponting was acquitted. That sent a powerful message to politicians about the standards that the public expect: standards of honesty and integrity. If we do away with the principle of jury equity, we do away with a vital democratic safeguard.

Q To pick up on what you said—“do away with”—I think you will agree that we are talking about not the removal of jury trials, but a significant and historically unprecedented reduction in their use.

Tim Crosland:

What I said was do away with jury equity. Jury equity—the principle that a jury can acquit a defendant irrespective of the directions of the judge—only applies to cases where people are unlikely to receive a sentence of more than three years. It applies to cases of conscience where people have acted in the public interest, at least in their own self-understanding, and that is what they want to present to the jury. Those people are very unlikely to get long sentences of beyond three years imprisonment. In reality, this measure will do away with the principle of jury equity altogether.

We have a quick declaration before the Minister comes in.

I want to declare that, as Crown prosecutor, I was assigned to the team that looked at the Insulate Britain campaign and reviewed the evidence as to whether charges should be brought. I want to make that clear and put it out in the open.

Tim Crosland:

Thank you.

Q I want to be clear about the scope of this argument. Obviously, the least serious cases that take place in the context of public order would never get to the Crown anyway, because they could be heard within the magistrates—is that right?

Tim Crosland:

Increasingly they are getting to the Crown court, because of this and the previous Government’s crackdown on protests. We had the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022; there is now a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for any act that interferes with the rights of anybody in any way. We are now getting more protest cases coming to the Crown court, and more than 200 people have been jailed in the last few years for peaceful acts of protest. But of those 200 people, only one has been jailed for more than three years. A number of people have been jailed for precisely three years—the threshold in this legislation—but only one for more than four years. Almost any judge would be able to say that it is incredibly unlikely that you will get a sentence of more than three years imprisonment—therefore, no jury.

Q One of the examples you gave was the Elbit case. The indictment there was an indictable-only offence. There were multiple charges, but the case contained an indictable-only offence, so it would have received a jury trial under our reformed system anyway. I took the liberty to check: in the case that you cited, there would have been a jury trial under our reformed system, would there not?

Tim Crosland:

You mean in the Official Secrets Act case?

In the one that you cited.

Tim Crosland:

In the Ponting case?

No, not in the Ponting case. In the recent Elbit case.

Tim Crosland:

No, these were criminal damage cases.

Q It was not purely criminal damage. There were indictable-only offences. That particular case would have still received a jury trial.

Tim Crosland:

There have been a number of these cases. Mainly, they are either way, because they are usually criminal damage cases. The case now—as it remains, because there is a retrial—is criminal damage, and these are either-way cases. On the tests as set out in the Bill, mainly—and we have a lot of evidence of this—a judge would say that this would be less than three years, because it is mostly spray paint and relatively low-level damage. We have seen cases of high-level damage too, but it is never more than three years.

Q But the point is that low-level damage would receive a magistrates trial anyway. What I am talking about is the scope between us. We are talking about a threshold change applicable to a relatively narrow group of cases, which is intended in part to address the backlogs. Those are not just backlogs in terms of delays in our courts; they also impact on the remand population, which is something that I know you will be concerned about. The amount of time that people are remanded in jail, including for crimes that they did not commit, is another aspect of this when we are talking about addressing the backlogs. Is that something that concerns you?

Tim Crosland:

Of course it is, but the proposition here is neutral to the wider argument about addressing the backlog. It is about a very niche number of cases where people have taken action to expose Government or corporate wrongdoing. The impact of this proposal is that they would no longer be tried by a cross-section of their peers; they would be tried by someone who, ultimately, is paid by the state, where we all know what the outcome will be, because judges in those trials have directed juries, as far as they possibly can, that there is no defence.

Most of these acquittals have involved a jury going, “Hang on a second. I’ve listened to the evidence over a week or two, and I’m satisfied that these people took action because they were desperate and felt that there was no option for getting the truth into the public domain to counter the disinformation of”—for example—“the fossil fuel companies.” Those jury acquittals then send an important signal to politicians that when the public actually get good information—let’s say about the nature of the climate emergency—they are shocked at Government inaction. Those acquittals are meaningful in a profound way, and we will not have them any more. It will just be guilty, guilty, guilty.

Q On your point about challenge, I do not think anyone in this room would dispute the importance of the right to protest. There is a difference where that breaks the law. The Government are fierce defenders of the independence of our judiciary, which often finds against the Government. That may be uncomfortable and we may disagree, but we have to take it on the chin. I do not doubt for one second the fierce independence of our judiciary. You said that we should make an exception for a niche group of cases but, fundamentally, what is the difference between someone who has broken the law—public order Laws or otherwise—and a working-class defendant from a marginalised community? Why should they be treated any differently under our criminal justice system?

Tim Crosland:

I think that is a good question—

It is a good question. Can you answer it?

Tim Crosland:

I want to talk particularly about cases where people are saying—like Clive Ponting and many activists did—that the motivation for taking the action is that what the state is doing is insufficient to protect the public. That is a fundamentally different situation. Look at the Colston situation: who better to decide whether that action crossed a threshold than a cross-section of Bristol residents, who would understand better than anybody in this room the impact of that statue on that community? That would not happen any more; it would be a paid judge deciding. In my submission, it is precisely those cases where a jury trial is a democratic imperative and where you would lose something really profound.

To answer your question, I would not wish to say that other people should not have a jury trial. I am not saying that at all; I am just making a particular argument for these cases.

Q I have a very simple question: what are the risks of ignoring campaigners like you when we talk about fundamentally changing the way we do jury trials?

Tim Crosland:

The risk is to democracy and to people’s confidence in democracy in cases that explore the boundaries between public interest, the right to protest and criminal law. We lose the essence of democratic rights if people know that they will not get a trial before their peers. It is a very profound danger. It was only in 2024 after 69-year-old retired social worker Trudi Warner had been arrested and prosecuted for holding up a sign outside London Crown court that the High Court said that juries were entitled to acquit as a matter of conscience. Her case came before the High Court, which dismissed the Government’s prosecution of her and said that jury equity is a vital principle of our democracy and she was right to uphold it. It was part of her convention rights. We lose that principle if we ignore protesters when we look at this legislation.

Thank you. We have one minute.

Q A quick question: building on the Minister’s questions, where would you draw the line on this? You mentioned the criminal damage cases, and I can understand your argument there, but theft is an either-way offence. Let us say that somebody nicks a bottle of whisky from Tesco and says, “Actually, I’m protesting against the excessive profits of the supermarket giants.” Does that fall into the narrow set of cases you were talking about? Do they not expand out?

You have 30 seconds to respond.

Tim Crosland:

We have this in the civil courts. Jury trials in the civil courts are reserved only for cases such as malicious prosecution or unlawful imprisonment—

Q We only have 30 seconds. Where would you draw the line? If someone says, “I’ve stolen a bottle of whisky to protest against Tesco,” would they be included in the cases you are talking about?

Tim Crosland:

If they argued that they acted in the public interest, then potentially, yes, but drawing that line—

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, thank you very much for your evidence.