“(1) The Lord Chancellor must lay before Parliament a report assessing the effectiveness of the provisions contained in sections 1 to 7 of this Act.

(2) A report under this section must be laid—

(a) within 24 months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed, or

(b) within 24 months of the latest date on which any of sections 1 to 7 is commenced, whichever is the later.

(3) The report must describe—

(a) any time saved in court as a result of the measures included in those sections;

(b) any change in the number of cases awaiting trial at Crown Court since this Act was passed;

(c) the number of cases awaiting trial at Crown Court at the time at which the Report is prepared;

(d) any other effect of the provisions of sections 1 to 7 on the criminal justice system.

(4) The report must provide a conclusion by the Lord Chancellor on whether the reforms have been effective in reducing the number of cases awaiting trial at Crown Court.

(5) Where the report concludes that the provisions have not been effective, the Lord Chancellor must make regulations providing for the immediate repeal of sections 1 to 7.

(6) Where the report concludes that the provisions are effective, the Lord Chancellor must make regulations making provision for repeal of sections 1 to 7 subject to the condition in subsection (8).

(7) The condition is that the number of cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court has in the opinion of the Lord Chancellor reduced to a sufficient extent.

(8) Regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”

This new clause introduces a sunset clause requiring a report on the effectiveness of the provisions. If the report finds that the measures are not effective, the Secretary of State must bring forward regulations to repeal them. If the report finds that the measures are effective, the Secretary of State must set a deadline for their repeal and a return to fully jury trials.

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

With this it will be convenient to discuss new Clause 24—Expiry of sections 1 to 7—

“(1) Sections 1 to 7 of this Act expire three months after the date on which the condition in subsection (2) is met.

(2) The condition is that number of cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court has been below pre-pandemic level in each of the previous four quarterly reporting periods.

(3) For the purposes of subsection (2) the number of cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court is that which is calculated by HM Courts and Tribunals Service.”

This new clause sunsets sections 1 to 7 of this Act so that they will not longer be in force once the court backlog has been resolved.

The new Clause is a Sunset clause that would require a report on the effectiveness of certain provisions of the Bill. If the report found that the provisions were not effective, the Secretary of State would have to bring forward regulations to repeal them; if it found that they were effective, the Secretary of State would have to set a deadline for their repeal and a return to full jury trials.

The design of these reforms has not been tested in practice. There are many different estimations of their impact on the backlog, and if they are shown to not be effective, they must not continue. If they prove to be effective at reducing the backlog, full jury trials could be reinstated when the backlog is reduced and we are working at a level that the criminal justice system can cope with.

My new Clause 24 and new clause 18 in the name of the hon. Member for Chichester seek to achieve a similar outcome. Although there is broad agreement that the backlog is a challenging issue that must be addressed, we believe that any measure that curtails jury trial rights in such a significant—and, I would say, unprecedented—way should be proportionate to the problem it seeks to solve and be used only for as long as absolutely necessary while we are presented with this problem. Therefore, we propose a Sunset clause to ensure that the powers expire once the court backlog has returned to pre-pandemic levels for a sustained period.

A sunset clause is a measure in a statute that provides for a law or specific provisions to cease to be effective after a predetermined date, or once a specific condition is met, unless Parliament takes further action to renew them. Although they have experienced a resurgence in recent decades as a tool for managing extraordinary or controversial measures, sunset clauses have been employed by Parliament since at least 1500. Historically and in contemporary practice, they serve vital democratic functions. They are used to facilitate the passage of controversial legislation by assuring critics and the public that the measures are temporary, rather than a permanent erosion. They act as a safeguard for democracy, particularly when emergency legislation is required, by preventing the normalisation of extraordinary powers.

Furthermore, sunset clauses create a more formal trigger for post-legislative scrutiny, forcing both the Executive and the legislature to revisit their assumptions and evaluate whether a law has been effective before deciding whether to prolong its life. The Terrorism Act 2006 and the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 both utilise sunsetting or recurring renewal requirements to ensure ongoing parliamentary oversight. More recently, sunset clauses were used in covid-19 legislation to ensure that restrictive measures did not extend longer than necessary. The UK Coronavirus Act 2020 contained a two-year sunset clause and a requirement for six-monthly reviews to determine whether temporary provisions should expire early.

When considering radical changes to our trial system during a time of crisis, we should look to our history for a more direct precedent. During world war two, a period when our continued existence as a free nation was genuinely uncertain, the Government of the day did not choose to radically cut down the use of jury trials or erode the right of the citizen to elect to be judged by their peers. Instead, they reduced the number of jurors from 12 to seven. Importantly, that was a temporary adjustment. As soon as the Nazi threat was defeated, the Government of the day restored the number of jurors to 12. That demonstrates a principled understanding that emergency measures taken in response to a temporary crisis should be reversed once that crisis is resolved.

In contrast, the measures before us today regarding the erosion of jury trials and the abolition of the right to elect are drafted as permanent changes to our statute book, with no built-in mechanism for their reversal once the backlog is managed again. As I have said, that is a significant departure from the most closely related historical example of what we did during even the darkest days of the 1940s.

Our sunset clause would tie the duration of these reforms to the very problem they are intended to fix. The Government’s case is that these are necessary, backlog-driven measures, and it is entirely consistent to state that they should expire once that backlog is brought down to a more historically normal level, which we define as the pre-pandemic level—a level that the system was able to manage sufficiently, if not perfectly, without the need for structural erosion of the right to a jury.

The need for a sunset clause is further emphasised by the significant concerns raised regarding the quality of justice that will be delivered under the new arrangements. Many representative bodies and campaign groups, including the Bar Council and JUSTICE, have warned that moving serious cases to what they describe as a summary process, or a judge sitting alone, could lead to a form of “rough justice”. We have heard that unrepresented defendants in magistrates courts may receive harsher sentences or may not be able to appeal. There are a whole range of issues that, all added together, increase the necessity for us to take the most restrictive and cautious approach to the use of this legislation.

In summary, a sunset clause is about proportionality and constitutional responsibility. Radical structural changes born of administrative pressure should not become permanent features of our democracy by default. We must remember that the Deputy prime minister himself has previously described juries as a “success story” of our justice system, and that the Prime Minister has stated that the

“overriding presumption should be jury trial, with very, very limited exceptions.”

The public did not vote for a permanent reduction in their historic right to be judged by their peers; indeed, the Government’s manifesto made no mention of these changes. By subjecting these provisions to a sunset clause, we can meet what the Government see as the immediate operational needs for tackling the issue but without permanently damaging our constitutional inheritance. We should follow the precedent of our predecessors in world war two: take the steps necessary to meet the crisis, but have the courage and the principle to reverse them once that crisis has passed.

The Committee will not be surprised to hear that the Government do not support a Sunset clause, for two primary reasons. First, these reforms address a challenge in our system that not only is acute—because of the crisis, which we inherited from the previous Government, that has been allowed to run out of control—but has long-term drivers, meaning that the demand pressures on our court system are not going away.

Of course we want to get the backlog down to a sustainable level, but that will not alleviate the challenges, described in the independent review of the criminal courts, presented by the changing patterns of crime; the procedural safeguards in our system, which mean that trials take longer; advancing technology; and the types of evidence that need to be dealt with. All that contributes to a demand pressure that will be sustained, and Government forecasting shows that that demand will continue to grow. Even once we have the backlogs under control, we will need these reforms to maintain an improved, sustainable position as part of the modernised rebalancing of the workload between Crown court and magistrates court, which is supported not just by the authors of the independent review but by the likes of Lord Ian Burnett, an experienced Lord Chief Justice, who spoke about this in his evidence.

Secondly, as colleagues well know, Parliament is sovereign. We are bringing these reforms forward because we believe they are the right measures to tackle a crisis and modernise our system. People have heard me say this time and again, and I stand by it, but this is about turning a crisis into an opportunity. I have spoken about the ways in which we have seized the opportunity to modernise our system and make it fairer and more sustainable. If future Parliaments think that we did not get it right, they can no doubt pass legislation to change it.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 9.

Question accordingly negatived.