In its submission to a review of the criminal courts led by the former high court judge Sir Brian Leveson, the Bar Council said the proposal to create a third intermediate court between magistrates and crown courts would not offer a solution to a situation caused by more cases coming through the system.
Michelle Heeley KC, a criminal barrister who led the Bar Council’s work on the review, said of the government’s intermediate court proposal: “It sounds like a good idea, that there are all these cases that we can just, in one fell swoop, remove from the crown court.
In its submission, the Bar Council said: “Altering the fundamental structure of the delivery of criminal justice is not a principled response to a crisis which was not, in truth, caused by that structure in the first place … we are strongly of the view that there is no basis for altering the structure of the court system, especially where it will limit the right of our citizens to be tried by a jury of their peers.”.
Lord Thomas, the former lord chief justice, told the Guardian last year that ministers should consider abandoning jury trials for some crown court cases unless they properly funded a justice system “in serious crisis”.
Make first-time, low-level offenders go to rehab instead of court, Bar Council suggests Exclusive: Barristers also say offenders could pay compensation to victims, in effort to tackle court backlog.
