Issue 406  12th July 2025

Leveson Report

Thousands of cases that would normally be heard in front of a jury should be decided by judges alone, according to recommendations made by a former senior judge. Sir Brian Leveson was asked by the Lord Chancellor to come up with a series of proposals to reduce the backlog of cases in the criminal courts. There are almost 77,000 cases waiting for trial in the Crown Court in England and Wales - meaning some defendants and victims are waiting years for justice. After reviewing the state of the criminal courts, Sir Brian suggested "fundamental" reforms to "reduce the risk of total system collapse". But some barristers argue juries are essential for fair justice - and scrapping them is wrong. To fix what he calls a broken system, Sir Brian has suggested having judge-only trials for certain cases such as fraud and bribery. Another recommendation involves having more out of court resolutions like cautions. He wants a new division of the Crown Court with two magistrates and a judge to handle less serious offences, and to increase the number of sentence reductions for guilty pleas at the first opportunity offered. This is all about shortening the process in the hope of cutting the big backlog...

Among the recommendations are:

• A reclassification of certain offences
• The creation of a new division of the Crown Court with two magistrates and a judge to handle "less serious offences", which would include some theft, burglary, and fraud offences
• Greater use of out of court resolutions - which would allow the police to deal quickly with lower level, often first time offending - including increased use of cautions and conditional cautions
• Removal of the right to elect trial in cases where the maximum sentence is two years' imprisonment with reclassification of some offences to "summary only" (meaning they will only be heard in a magistrates' court)
• The threshold for criminal damage being dealt with as a summary only offence to be increased from £5,000 to £10,000.
• Maximum sentence reduction increased to 40% for guilty pleas at first opportunity, encouraging quicker case resolution
• Judge-alone trials introduced either by election on the part of the defendant or for the most complex cases

The report can be found here.

'Post Office scandal may have led to more than 13 suicides, inquiry finds'

More than 13 people may have killed themselves as a result of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal and it drove at least 59 more to contemplate suicide, according to the first findings from the public inquiry into what has been labelled the worst miscarriage of justice in UK history.

The 162-page volume one report from Sir Wyn Williams, the retired judge who chaired the hearings, looks at the “disastrous human impact” on thousands of post office operators wrongly held responsible for shortfalls in their branches caused by faulty software. It also covers the issue of compensation, arguing the Post Office and its advisers had in many cases adopted an “unnecessarily adversarial attitude” to those seeking financial redress, who now number at least 10,000 – far higher than the more than 1,000 people prosecuted.

Speaking after the report was published, Williams said evidence had revealed a “profoundly disturbing” picture. While four suicides have been blamed on the scandal, Williams said at least 13 could be linked to it, and the total may be higher with some deaths unreported. A further 19 people began abusing alcohol, with some saying they could not sleep at night without drinking first. Of the 59 who had thoughts about killing themselves, 10 went on to attempt suicide, some on more than one occasion. Contemplating suicide “was a common experience across both those who were and were not prosecuted”, the report said...

'Drugs smuggled by drone undermining rehabilitation in prisons, watchdog warns'

The volume of drugs being delivered by drones into prisons is severely undermining hopes of rehabilitation among inmates, a watchdog has warned. Criminal gangs are smuggling contraband to bored and vulnerable inmates who are locked up for most of the day in filthy cells with little activity, the chief inspector of prisons’ annual report said. Charlie Taylor previously warned that drones dropping drugs at high-security jails HMP Manchester and HMP Long Lartin was a “threat to national security”, and he repeated calls for the threat to be taken seriously “at the highest levels of government”...

Almost two-fifths (39%) of respondents to prisoner surveys said it was easy to get drugs in prison, and inspectors regularly visited prisons where the recorded rate of positive random drug tests was more than 30%. The report said in many jails there were “seemingly uncontrollable levels of criminality” that often inexperienced staff were unable to contain...

'BSB lays out reforms to speed up disciplinary cases'

Major changes to the way in which barristers are disciplined – enabling cases to move faster through the process – have been laid out by the Bar Standards Board (BSB). The 34 proposed reforms to its enforcement processes also include resetting the current ‘fitness to practise’ regime to a ‘health’ regime that allows for “a more flexible and compassionate process to handle issues of physical or mental impairment”.

The consultation follows a review and redesign of its end-to-end enforcement process, which in turn came off the back of a report by City law firm Fieldfisher last year that found the BSB had the right approach to dealing with complaints about barristers’ conduct but that there were “a large number of areas” for improvement. It focuses on ‘in principle’ proposals for change, with a second consultation on the detail of their implementation to follow next year. Among the proposals are:

• A new overriding objective that the Bar Tribunal & Adjudication Service (BTAS) deal with cases “justly and proportionately”;
• Greater case management powers and responsibility that would allow BTAS to set directions more quickly and actively manage proceedings;
• Giving tribunals greater powers to impose an immediate interim suspension or conditions pending an appeal;
• Giving both parties the right to make representations to a tribunal on the question of sanction where charges against the barrister have been found proved (the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal does not allow the regulator to do this in general);
• Clarifying the BSB’s right to appeal to the High Court in cases where charges are partially dismissed;
• Introducing a presumption that, by default, any witness making an allegation of a sexual or violent nature, will be anonymised;
• Asking whether all tribunal panels should consist of three members with a legal majority or whether the option to refer more serious cases to a five-member panel with a barrister majority should be retained;
• Chairs of tribunal panels need no longer by a judge or KC but may be an experienced legal practitioner with at least 15 years’ practising experience;
• The panels which decide whether to refer cases to the tribunal should consist of three members with a lay majority; and
• Deferring service on a barrister of written allegations of potential breaches of the BSB Handbook to close to the conclusion, rather than at the commencement as now, of an investigation.

'Lawyers attending police station at night should be paid extra, government told'

Duty solicitors who have to attend the police station during the night should be paid extra and the fee for trials that ‘crack’ at the last minute should be even higher than proposed, the Law Society has told the government. The Ministry of Justice has been consulting on a 12% pay rise for solicitors working in the police stations, courts and prisons. The department proposes to ‘harmonise’ the police station fee scheme, uplift fees for work in the magistrates' and youth courts by 10%, raise the fee for 'cracked' trials to 75% of the trial fee and uplift fees for prison work by 24%...

The government was told that the extra bit of cash that firms pay to their fee-earners to attend the police station during unsocial hours is not enough to cover childcare costs. The fixed fee does not cover the cost of additional adjustments that may be required by solicitors with disabilities. Chancery Lane also wants the fee for cracked trials to be 95% of the trial fee. ‘A firm might estimate - for example - £75,000 on a big case, but if it cracks the day before the trial this could drop to as low as £35,000, despite all the work in preparation for the trial having been undertaken.' Other recommendations include enhanced payments for more experienced solicitors to deal with the difficult and challenging cases.

'Whistleblowers make up 10% of referrals to SFO as fraud office makes new case for incentives'

The Serious Fraud Office has made a new case for whistleblowers to receive financial incentives. Of the 1,450 referrals made to the SFO last year, just over 10% came from whistleblowing disclosures, the office has revealed in its annual report. In his introductory statement to the report, director Nick Ephgrave (pictured above) acknowledged said the SFO is ‘driving the argument for the incentivisation of whistleblowers’. Ephgrave last year said giving financial incentives for whistleblowers was one possible way of speeding up SFO cases from investigation to prosecution...