Jury Still Out on Fraud Trial Reforms as Government Changes Tack - But Not Enough

The government's partial retreat on jury trial reform is welcome, but serious concerns remain that there are proposals that "technical and lengthy fraud and financial offences" will still be heard by a judge alone under amendments to the Courts and Tribunals Bill.

The City of London Law Society's Corporate Crime and Corruption Committee, which submitted a detailed response to Sir Brian Leveson's Independent Review of the Criminal Courts in September 2025, and provided further evidence to the Lord Chancellor following the publication of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, warns that the justification now offered for removing jury trial in fraud cases — "freeing up jurors from the personal and financial burdens created by complex, months-long trials" — bears no resemblance to the original rationale advanced by Sir Brian himself.

Sir Brian's review was commissioned to address the record Crown Court backlog, now standing at nearly 81,000 cases. His fraud recommendations were framed around the complexity of financial evidence and the alleged difficulty juries face in understanding it. The government has now abandoned that argument — but replaced it with a different one: juror inconvenience.

The Committee's response to Part 1 of the Leveson Review was unequivocal: "there appears to be no evidence that trial by jury of serious and complex fraud is a cause of, or a significant contributor to, the current crisis." If the original justification — backlog reduction — has been dropped, the legal basis for this exceptional measure has effectively collapsed. Indeed, Jonathan Fisher KC’s independent review on Fraud in the Digital Age published earlier in 2026 also found that juries do not cause court delays or backlogs, with challenges in managing massive volumes of digital material during the investigation and disclosure process being a core cause of delay. In fact, as criminal fraud prosecutions turn on dishonesty, which is measured by the standards of ordinary, decent people, then a representative cross-section of the public on a jury is the appropriate arbiter of fact.

Substituting juror inconvenience as the new rationale is a fundamentally different — and weaker — argument that could apply to any lengthy trial, whether a complex murder, a major drugs conspiracy or a serious sexual offence case. If juror burden justifies removing the right to jury trial in fraud cases, there is no principled reason why it should not apply equally to other lengthy and demanding trials. The government has drawn an arbitrary line that cannot withstand scrutiny.

The timing of this announcement is particularly troubling given the Supreme Court's recent judgment in R v Hayes & Palombo — the Libor cases — in which the Court found that successive judges had misdirected juries and that the Court of Appeal had erred in failing to uphold defendants' appeals.

The Supreme Court's judgment demonstrates precisely the opposite of what fraud trial reform proponents argue. The Libor cases do not demonstrate that juries cannot handle complex fraud cases. They demonstrate that judges can — and do — make serious errors in directing juries. Removing the jury does not remove the risk of judicial error; it removes the safeguard of twelve independent minds assessing the evidence, and it removes the defendant's most fundamental protection against wrongful conviction.

The Committee has consistently argued that the backlog crisis is caused by under-resourcing, disclosure failures in the digital age, reduction in court sitting days, police capacity issues and court infrastructure — not by jury trials. The government's own announcement acknowledges this, promising millions in technology investment, expanded judicial resources and structural reform.

Those are the right measures. The CLLS strongly supports investment in AI-powered disclosure tools, remote participation for expert witnesses, enhanced preparatory hearings under the Criminal Justice Act 1987 framework, and expanded court sitting hours. These are evidence-based solutions that address the actual causes of delay.

Retaining judge-only trials for fraud — on a justification that has now shifted from backlog reduction to juror convenience — is an unprincipled anomaly that should be removed from the Bill entirely.

Louise Hodges, Chair of the CLLS Corporate Crime and Corruption Committee said: "Jury trials are vital, fair and efficient. Juries are capable of trying technical and complex fraud and financial cases. The government has rightly recognised this for most serious offences — it must now apply the same logic consistently."