The Bold Survive

The only British MP subject to an Interpol Red Notice, Tulip Siddiq rejected the legitimacy of her conviction in absentia in Bangladesh on the grounds that it was the verdict of a judge sitting alone rather than that of a jury. Then she voted to abolish the right to trial by jury in almost all of the cases to which it applied in England and Wales, although the Bill passed only on the votes of MPs for seats in Scotland.

But there is no feminist clamour for the changes demanded by the likes of Natalie Fleet, whose politically useful version of her past is taken entirely at face value. Why would there be? Juries convict in 76 per cent of the rape cases that come before them, rape is supposedly still to be triable only by jury, and in the four years between my first and my second spells in prison, one of the most striking changes was that between 60 and 80 per cent of men inside were now there for looking at a woman the wrong way, if we had looked at her at all.

My case was the most astonishing that anyone, staff or inmate, had ever heard, but to my mind plenty came close, although people who had spent more time in the system found them run-of-the-mill these days. For example, there was a man whose ex-wife had turned up at his house with the Police already in tow, thereby placing him in breach of his restraining order, in full view of the Police, the moment that she set foot on his doorstep. That was not an isolated incident. Even before the abolition of almost all jury trials, and of the automatic right of appeal from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court, the prisons are already at breaking point because of this sort of thing. And Hadley Freeman writes:

Life, as the ancient sage Ferris Bueller said, moves pretty fast. But sometimes the brass-necked hypocrisy comes at such speed that the head spins. Which brings us to this week’s subject: the justice secretary, David Lammy, and his concern for victims of rape. As you have probably heard, Lammy believes the way to reduce the absurdly long time it takes for cases to come to court is to scrap jury trials for less serious offences.

To describe this proposal as controversial in the legal profession is at the Pope–Catholic, bear–woods level of obviousness. Flora Page KC, who represented wrongly convicted sub-postmasters, hates Lammy’s proposals so much that last week she resigned from the legal services watchdog specifically to campaign against the plans, accusing Lammy of “hijacking the suffering of victims”.

You know who else must hate these proposals? A young whippersnapper who in 2020 referred to the right to trial by jury as “a fundamental part of our democratic settlement”. His name is — let me just put on my reading spectacles — David Lammy A Few Years Ago, But life moves et cetera and so forth.

The crown court backlog stands at 80,000, up 12 per cent since the general election. But claims that reducing jury trials will fix this are — again — controversial. The government says it absolutely will (well, it would, wouldn’t it?, to borrow a famous court quote). The think tank the Institute for Government says any reductions in waiting times are “likely to be extremely marginal”. Several of the lawyers I spoke to last week said another concern was whether this was, in fact, the start of ending trials by jury. “Just think what Reform would do if they got into government, and Labour has already opened this door. Has Lammy even considered that?” one said. So the government is taking a big punt on a highly divisive move for potentially little benefit. Which feels like a summary of the entire Starmer project.

Despite the controversy, MPs voted last week to send the Courts and Tribunals Bill to the committee stage, with a majority of 101. Labour MPs have one more chance to stop it. But here’s the weird thing about this bill: even though it isn’t about rape victims — rape trials will still be decided by juries — it’s somehow become entirely about them. Last week’s Commons debate mainly focused on rape survivors sharing their experiences of the court process. The Labour MP Natalie Fleet said, “I can tell you from personal experience, you know what’s worse than being raped? Facing years of waiting to see if people believe you.” But just as not all women think alike (always a shock to some), not all rape survivors think alike. Charlotte Nichols, MP for Warrington North, accused Lammy of giving rape survivors like her “false hope” with promises of how his bill would help, and said he was using victims as a “cudgel” to push through his reforms.

I have huge admiration for Nichols and Fleet sharing their histories to provide perspective. But my heart sinks whenever women end up having to hawk their traumas for the sake of political processes (Nichols had never before talked in parliament about being raped). Especially so in this case, because — again — this bill isn’t about rape victims. But Lammy has cynically made it entirely about them.

From the start, he has put the focus on them. “If a woman is, sadly, raped in our country today, she will likely have her trial come on in 2028, maybe 2029. That’s a long time for her to wait. Victims of rape are pulling out — 60 per cent are pulling out of cases — witnesses fall away, and the trauma of waiting is too hard,” he said in December. The 60 per cent figure was then repeated in a briefing circulated to Labour members about how to defend the bill.

Rape is notoriously hard to prosecute, but it’s decidedly dubious to tie that 60 per cent to the backlogs in the courts. “Delays pre-charge or a change of mind pre-charge can’t be blamed on the backlog. So much of what Lammy says to defend those proposals is inaccurate. He must know,” one KC told The Times. Must he? I don’t know, this is about the level of understanding I’d expect of a man who once went on Celebrity Mastermind and said the king who succeeded Henry VIII was Henry VII, and that Marie Antoinette won a Nobel prize for physics.

Grasp of detail or otherwise aside, Lammy has exploited the deeply emotive feelings that rape victims inspire to ram through his bill, arguing that if MPs don’t vote for it then they are extending victims’ suffering, even though that is far from proven. Instead of having a rational debate, he has misused statistics and played on emotions.

Well, here’s some more emotion for him: I feel deeply scepticism about his concern for women who have been raped. Only five years ago he said that women who object to men who identify as women entering women-only spaces — including prisons, where many of the female prisoners have been raped and abused — are “dinosaurs” who want to “hoard rights”. He later defended this by saying, “I will always stand with those from a minority community.”

Well, Mr Lammy, have I got a reading recommendation for you. It’s a 2017 review of minorities and the criminal justice system, which conclusively found that minorities prefer jury trials, seeing them as a safeguard against prejudice because they — unlike judges and magistrates — represent the local population. It was written by our old friend, David Lammy A Few Years Ago. As the man said, life moves pretty fast.