Politics · 31 July 2026
Prime minister Andy Burnham drops Keir Starmer's plan to restrict jury trials
House of Commons via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-3.0)
While visiting Sheffield on Friday, Burnham said his own experience with the Hillsborough disaster makes him want to protect the justice system. Former justice secretary David Lammy originally pitched the changes last December to tackle a massive backlog of almost 80,000 unheard court cases. Under those older plans, defendants facing up to three years behind bars would have lost their right to a jury.
Reported by The Guardian · How we write briefs