Brutal Repercussions

Rob Marchant writes:

While Westminster has been alight with chatter over whether or not Rachel Reeves misrepresented the facts in the run-up to her Budget, events have been happening in parallel which are likely to have a far longer shadow for Keir Starmer and his crew. Indeed, they are situations which, if left as they are, will continue to have brutal repercussions long after they all leave office.

The first was Wes Streeting’s announcement last month of the puberty blockers trial, due to kick off in the New Year.

When the Cass report landed in April last year, campaigners looking to protect Britain’s children from the harm of untested medicines were surely so overjoyed to see that thousands of lives could be protected from likely sterilisation and severe health problems in later life, that less focus was given to one of the report’s other recommendations, on the smaller number children which it recommended be recruited for a clinical trial, to finally put a stop to any debate on the efficacy of said treatment.

It seemed churlish to complain about this matter of the fine print, when the main battle, over ceasing the general puberty-blocker programme, had already been won. But now the last grain of sand has fallen into the bottom of the egg timer and the trial, which it was easy to blithely assume would never start, is about to begin.

This means that 226 children will be legally taking the same drugs which have been declared illegal for thousands of others diagnosed with gender dysphoria. To recap: these drugs have never been approved for this use; the treatment is experimental, with some horrific side effects; and consent cannot be meaningfully given by minors as young as 10, most of whom are too young to have experienced pubertal changes, let alone sex.

(And if, after Cass, you still truly believe that there is a medical case for using puberty blockers, I direct you to this disturbing video, in which no less a figure than the president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) admits that all children to date who have been treated with them prior to puberty – Tanner Stage 2 – have ended up anorgasmic.)

To say this trial is controversial is something of an understatement. For many, blockers represent a scandalous experiment on minors, at the “extreme risk”, as campaigner and author Helen Joyce put it, of permanently ruining their sex lives and general health; a historic mistake on the part of Health Secretary, Wes Streeting.

Nonetheless, he seems intent on proceeding, in a way that seems emblematic of the government’s somewhat cavalier attitude to the rights of women and children. In the same week, outgoing EHRC chief Kishwer Falkner, interviewed in the Times last week, that the Labour government has “abandoned” women, referencing Bridget Philipson’s blocking of her issuing the EHRC’s guidance on the impacts of the Supreme Court judgement on “sex meaning sex”, as well as its inability to call out Pakistani men as an important factor in the grooming gangs scandal (we might also note that the last time the Labour Party crossed swords with the EHRC, it was over its poor treatment of Jews, and it didn’t end well [for whom?]; it is now women).

This blind spot on women’s issues will cost Labour dear, but nowhere more dear than the harm to be caused to that small cross-section of the country’s children. Former Labour MP Rosie Duffield has also put together a cross-party letter to Streeting, requesting that the trial be pulled. It should be, before the lives of 266 children, not to mention his own career and conscience, are all permanently blighted by this decision.

And then there is Assisted Dying. This last week, proof has come to light of what many suspected, that although formally neutral, Labour figures had actually planned all along to make it effectively a Labour bill by driving the legislation forward “under the radar” as a Private Members Bill, easing its path through the Commons and helping remove obstacles for Kim Leadbeater.

This makes it look grubby and disingenuous but, even before that, the bill has had substantial resistance: not just from those who reject the premise of Assisted Dying on religious or moral grounds but, more importantly, from those who simply think it poorly drafted and lacking in adequate safeguards. The Lords’ review has resulted in an unprecedented 1,071 amendments to the legislation. While supporters of the flawed bill simply dismiss this as filibustering, it is a more convincing argument that this actually the Lords doing its job, in a bill which its critics feel should never have been introduced in this inappropriate, back-door way.

Finally, this week has seen the bombshell news that the Justice Secretary, David Lammy, is going to abolish trial by jury for all but a few, very serious crimes. Critics say it will likely have little impact in terms of reducing the pressure on the British courts system, but see slashing what many see as its jewel in its crown, one which has survived over 800 years, as disastrous (for good measure, Lammy is also now being accused of cooking the books on rape statistics, to justify his point).

For a short-term operational fix, it would be a historic change to the way Britain does things, in a legal system where, for example, rape hardly ever gets to trial in the first place. Labour MPs are already set to rebel, including its former Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner.

In all these cases, whether it be jury trials; the lives of vulnerable adults who might be desperate, broke or coerced; or the long-term mental, physical and sexual health of hundreds of under-18s; there are serious and very reasonable public objections; and all very much cases of “we’ll miss them when they’re gone”.

After David Cameron’s “big idea” of Brexit, many of us were probably hoping that political ideas would be resoundingly pint-sized from hereon in. But these three big ideas are not only major moral disaster areas: they are ones of a magnitude which surely make or break political careers and, quite probably, produce deep regrets into old age among those who pushed them through, in the face of perfectly reasonable objections.

These three things can all be undone: but time is surely running out to do so.

And Karl Turner writes:

David Lammy’s forced announcement last week after the apparent accidental leak of his plans to scrap some jury trials came as a shock to Labour backbenchers.

There was reference in our election manifesto to addressing the Crown Court backlog which grew exponentially under the previous government, but there was never any suggestion that we, the Labour Party, would ever consider doing away with the rights of those accused of serious crimes to be tried by a jury of 12 good men, women and true.

Not least when current justice ministers, including the Lord Chancellor, have made very public statements pleading the case for juries in criminal proceedings, to be maintained. After all, juries have existed in the English (and Welsh) legal system for over 800 years.

Threatening to restrict jury trials is both a dereliction of duty and an ineffective way of dealing with a crippling backlog of cases. The erosion of jury trials not only risks undermining a fundamental right, but importantly, will not reduce the backlog by anything like enough to speed up justice for victims and those that are accused and prosecuted by the Crown.

If this ever comes to the House of Commons, I will rebel and vote against it, and I think the government would be defeated on this issue. The House and the public will not stand for the erosion of a fundamental right, particularly given that there are more effective ways to reduce the backlog.

Sir Brian Leveson is a well-respected figure whose words carry much weight but even Sir Brian is not wedded to this idea. But the outcry from stakeholders in the criminal justice system must not be ignored.

Our system rightly prevents the judiciary from speaking out on such matters, but when you have the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association united in their opposition to these destructive plans, then it is easy to work out what judges and recently-retired judges are saying to lawyers when they are speaking privately.

These warnings need to be heard and acted upon before it is too late. Let’s be honest now, the problem (which is massive) was not caused by juries and it will not be solved by their removal. If this is not ditched, then the government risks another embarrassing defeat.

Labour MPs deserve better from the prime minister to have us marched up the proverbial hill to be marched back down again and then have us pretend that we were never asked to do the unthinkable in the first place. Parliamentarians from across the political divide recognise the constitutional importance of trial by jury and the danger of their erosion from public life.

Backbench MPs see this as a step too far, and no responsible parliament can allow a cornerstone of justice and our democracy to be savagely attacked on the basis that the government is actually doing something to fix the problem when in fact anybody that is anybody, practitioners, academics or the judiciary itself know full well that these plans will not do what it says on the tin and will most definitely not protect and promote the interests of victims of crime.

The Lord Chancellor would be better promising less and doing more. There is much to do. The government chief whip is a good and well-respected MP, but he isn’t Paul Daniels - the chief whip’s best magic trickery cannot magic the inevitable rebellion away.

One of the primary causes of the backlog is the restriction on ‘sitting days’, the number of days Crown Courts operate a year. Around 130,000 sitting days are available to the courts, but, despite a capacity crisis, sitting days are restricted by around 20,000 a year.

While the government has rightly announced that it is increasing the number of sitting days by 5000, this is still a substantial shortfall. This inexplicable misuse of court time needs to be rectified.

The parliamentary timetable for these wrongheaded proposals is most likely to be the second half of next year, perhaps October or November. If the emergency is now, then why isn’t the justice secretary arguing for time on the floor of the House now?

Why, if it is so very urgent and just about reducing the backlog, won’t David Lammy put in a sunset clause on the face of the bill so that this policy can be scrapped once the backlog is down to a manageable number? At which time he himself would revert to saying that “criminal trials without juries are a bad idea, you don’t fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair”.

And why not start using the promised £550 million for victims support service immediately? The government doesn’t need primary legislation for that. There isn’t a backlog in every court centre. Certain courts have managed to delete any backlog to manageable numbers by proactive case management. Let’s look at the model before we throw out the baby with the bath water. The government should reconsider this now, before lasting damage is done to public confidence in our courts, the justice system and this government.