Judge-alone fraud trials survive as government retreats from broader jury reform
The UK government has axed plans for a new tier of judge-only criminal trials, but technical and lengthy fraud cases could still be decided without a jury.
Complex fraud, bribery and money-laundering cases could soon be heard by a Crown Court judge sitting alone, after the government retained that measure while abandoning its more ambitious plans to restrict jury trials. The change was announced on Sunday (4 October) by Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Alex Norris, who said he had listened to “the strength of feeling” about increasing the use of judge-alone trials in the Crown Court. Juries will remain in place for the great bulk of serious criminal cases, but the Courts and Tribunals Bill will preserve a separate route for certain exceptionally long and technical financial prosecutions.
Louise Hodges, chair of the City of London Law Society’s Corporate Crime and Corruption Committee and a criminal litigation partner at Kingsley Napley, rejects the premise that complexity makes juries unsuitable. “Jury trials are vital, fair and efficient,” she tells ICLG News in an email. “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.”
Hodges points to the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in R v Hayes; R v Palombo, which quashed the Libor and Euribor manipulation convictions of two former traders after finding that the trial judges had misdirected the juries on the law. “Core to the original case for removing juries from serious and complex fraud trials was that they couldn’t understand the evidence,” she explains. “There was no evidence to substantiate this and, indeed, the recent Supreme Court’s judgment in the Libor cases blew that argument apart – it wasn’t the juries who got it wrong, it was the judges and the Court of Appeal.”
Hodges contends that reliance on the burden of lengthy jury service was a “fundamentally different – and weaker – argument”, capable of applying just as readily to a complex murder, drugs conspiracy or serious sexual-offence trial. In her view, an arbitrary dividing line around financial crime cannot be justified when allegations of fraud can destroy careers, reputations and lives.
