UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham signalled on 31 July 2026 that he would abandon plans to restrict jury trials in England and Wales, reversing a flagship justice reform inherited from the previous government. Speaking at a community centre in Sheffield, Burnham cited his personal experience campaigning for justice over the Hillsborough disaster as a reason for his reluctance to limit jury trials (The Guardian).

The plans originated under Keir Starmer's government and were proposed by former justice secretary David Lammy, who also served as Deputy Prime Minister at the time. In December 2025, Lammy announced that defendants likely to receive a sentence of three years or less would no longer receive a jury trial. Only cases involving alleged murder, rape, or manslaughter would keep the right to a jury (BBC News).

In England and Wales, a jury trial means that a group of ordinary citizens, rather than a judge alone, hears the evidence and decides whether the defendant is guilty. The restrictions were embedded in the courts and tribunals bill, a broader legislative package that would also remove defendants' ability to choose a jury trial and limit the right to appeal a magistrates court verdict to a crown court. Magistrates — lay judges who handle less serious cases — would see their sentencing powers extended from a maximum of one year to at least 18 months. A judge-only "swift" court would be established to hear cases without a jury (The Guardian).

The Lammy proposals aimed to halve the number of jury trials from 15,000 per year and clear a backlog of nearly 80,000 court cases. That backlog has been the central policy pressure driving the reforms. It also frames the political stakes of Burnham's reversal: scrapping the curbs removes the principal mechanism the previous government had designed to reduce it.

Burnham's own position carries a particular irony. The King's Speech 2026 background briefing notes quote him, then Mayor of Greater Manchester, as saying that jury trials take twice as long as they did in 2000. He estimated that trials without a jury would reduce hearing time by at least 20 per cent, which he called a conservative estimate (Gov.uk). Those remarks, made before he became prime minister, placed Burnham on record supporting the efficiency rationale behind Lammy's reforms. His Sheffield speech now positions him against the very policy his earlier remarks helped justify.

The reforms faced sustained opposition from the legal profession. Thousands of lawyers, including top barristers and retired judges, urged the government to drop the plan to abolish some jury trials (BBC News). MPs nonetheless voted to allow the jury restriction bill to progress in Parliament despite dissent from some Labour MPs (BBC News).

That dissent carried political consequences. Labour MP Karl Turner was suspended from the parliamentary Labour party over his criticisms of David Lammy and Keir Starmer regarding the jury trial plans. Burnham said he had asked chief whip Anneliese Midgley — the MP responsible for party discipline — to speak to Turner about being readmitted to the parliamentary Labour party. The move fits a broader pattern of reconciliation: Diane Abbott and Joani Reid, Labour MPs who had the whip suspended under Starmer, were readmitted to the parliamentary Labour party on 30 July 2026 (The Guardian).

Burnham's invocation of Hillsborough is not incidental to the jury trial debate. The Hillsborough disaster, in which 97 Liverpool supporters died in a crush at Sheffield Wednesday's stadium in 1989, became a decades-long cause célèbre over official misconduct, biased reporting, and the inadequacy of the initial inquests. Burnham's advocacy for the families was central to securing fresh inquests that ultimately returned unlawful killing verdicts. The connection he draws between that experience and his reluctance to curtail juries rests on an argument about citizen participation in justice: that lay involvement in legal decision-making serves as a safeguard against institutional failure.

The broader context here is a prime minister unwinding a predecessor's signature justice legislation while simultaneously healing internal party fractures that the legislation created. Burnham is signalling the reversal before the bill has completed its parliamentary passage, which raises procedural questions about whether the government will withdraw or substantially amend the courts and tribunals bill rather than allow it to proceed in its current form. The bill contains provisions beyond jury trials, including the expansion of magistrates' sentencing powers and the restriction of appeal rights from magistrates to crown courts, and it is not yet clear whether those elements would survive if the jury-related provisions are stripped out.

What remains unresolved is the case backlog itself. The figure of nearly 80,000 pending court cases that Lammy's reforms were designed to address has not been contested by Burnham. Scrapping the trial restrictions removes the projected efficiency gains, including the 20 per cent reduction in hearing time that Burnham himself had cited. No alternative strategy for clearing the backlog has yet been articulated alongside the reversal.