Norris drops the plan for judge-only trials in cases under three years

Justice secretary Alex Norris has dropped the plan to let judges in England and Wales sit alone on Crown Court cases that would draw a sentence of less than three years, and he says the courts backlog will still fall in this parliament.

The proposal came from the previous government of Keir Starmer. It would have taken a large band of medium cases away from juries. Prime Minister Andy Burnham's decision abandons that band. Norris told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that legislation for judge-only trials "was always going to be the most complicated to implement" and would have slowed other reforms.

What remains is narrower. The Ministry of Justice said only complex fraud and financial offences would be heard by a judge alone. Thousands of medium-level crimes stay with volunteer magistrates, who already sit without a jury, or with a jury in the Crown Court. The three-year sentence line is the line that has gone.

Norris said he had heard the strength of feeling on judge-alone trials and had changed course. He also said he was still committed to a shorter wait for a hearing. Asked when the backlog would fall, he said "in this Parliament" and would not give a figure. That refusal is the gap in the announcement. A minister can drop a reform and still owe a number for the queue he says will shrink.

The backlog is the reason the Starmer plan existed. Crown Court waiting times have stretched for years, and a jury trial takes a courtroom, a judge and twelve jurors for days. A judge sitting alone finishes some of those cases faster. The cost is the loss of the jury on offences that can send a person to prison for up to three years. Burnham's government has decided that cost is too high for that band, and acceptable for complex fraud.

Fraud is the exception with a history. Long fraud trials are where juries have been criticised for length, and where specialised financial evidence piles up. Keeping judge-only trial for that class, and only that class, is a different statute from a general shift of every case under three years. Norris is betting that the smaller bill passes and that the larger one would have jammed the programme.

Magistrates are the other half of the ministry's line. They already try the lower offences without a jury, and they can send a case up if it is too serious. "Thousands of medium-level crimes" staying with them is a volume claim. The ministry did not publish the list or the count on Sunday. Until it does, the phrase describes a direction, not a docket.

The politics are plain. Starmer's government wrote the jury plan. Burnham's justice secretary has withdrawn the part that drew the loudest objection, and he has kept a fraud exception that is easier to defend. The backlog promise stays, without a number attached.

What happens next is a bill that is smaller than the one officials had drafted. Judge-only trial for complex fraud still needs a clause, a committee and a vote. The cases under three years go back to the jury track they were already on. The queue those cases sit in is the queue Norris says will fall before this parliament ends, and will not put a figure on.