I take the opportunity to summarise some of the recent, and pending, corruptions of justice being enacted by Parliament and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). I address in detail below the proposal to do away with trial by jury in many cases and the proposal to create “specialist courts” for domestic abuse and sexual offences. But first a quick round-up of other corruptions of justice on which I have already written articles.

I have recently addressed the legally sanctioned moral horror of abortion and the two-tier justice in respect of Christians’ lone silent prayer versus massed and noisy Muslim prayers.

I have also recently addressed the bewildering variety of primary legislation being used to further the deeply biased perspective on harassment, VAWG and online “safety” under the guise of protection, some of which provides a convenient mechanism for State controlled censorship. These Bills or Acts are deeply prejudiced against men and boys. In the case of boys in schools the misogyny narrative is particularly nasty. This prejudice can only make any misogyny worse because injustice will do that.

Then we have the corruptions of justice specific to sexual offences. This blog includes brief accounts of many specific cases. Even where the accused might be genuinely guilty, two-tier justice is very evident. Then there is the myth about rape myths and the almost unbelievable Operation Soteria and the suspiciously skewed presentation of precedent in the matter of consent after drinking.

Then we have the latest blow to fathers after parental separation. In 2014 fathers won a small victory in the form of the inclusion in the Children and Families Act 2014 of a clause stating, “A court…is, as respects each parent,….to presume, unless the contrary is shown, that involvement of that parent in the life of the child concerned will further the child’s welfare”. The present Government has announced its intention to repeal that clause. The clause that was included in the 2014 Act was, in any case, already hugely watered-down by a killer amendment by Baroness Butler-Sloss at that time, the egregious history of which I recorded here.

The repeal is one of the outcomes of the so-called Harms Report of July 2020, a feminist strike against fathers with a degree of prejudice so appalling as to defy brief description. The attempt to raise a Judicial Review of the Harms Report is recorded in Append C to this post, which established that the Government’s Legal Department claimed that “There is no automatic right to contact between a parent and child”. This remarkable claim (unjustified in law, as far as we can see) is tantamount to claiming that all children ‘belong’ to the State which may, at its beneficent discretion, allow the parents to be their caregivers… or perhaps not.

The Intention to Abolish Juries in Many Trials

The Attorney General, David Lammy, has announced the Government’s plans to abolish trial by jury in all but the most serious offences: ‘Swift and fair’ plan to get justice for victims.

Lammy’s announcement is replete with ostensible concern for “victims” but in truth the reason for the proposals is mostly to solve the political embarrassment of the large backlog of cases facing the court. That and the saving of money that will result, as well as Lammy’s known ideological bias. David Lammy stated in March 2019 that “the vast majority of women in prison are there because of a man, and are there because of exploitation, and the system is not responding adequately to the role of that man”. From his perspective the proposals are all good because our Attorney General does not quite understand the concept of justice.

Even Lammy’s friends could hardly claim that he has the sharpest intellect. His appearance on Celebrity Mastermind became comedy gold with gaffs such as believing that Marie Antoinette won the Nobel Prize for physics and that Henry VII acceded the English throne after the death of Henry VIII. 

Do note that juries acquit defendants at nearly double the rate of Magistrates’ courts (21.6% compared with 11.4%), and that the difference is even greater for offences which challenge free speech  (27.6% compared with 15.9%), Free Speech Union. This suggests that the changes to do away with juries will increase the number of miscarriages of justice in Crown Court (noting that all such trials involve a defendant claiming innocence).

It has rightly been observed by others that trial by jury accounts for only about 2% – 3% of all criminal prosecutions. This is mostly because over 90% of prosecutions are addressed by Magistrates courts, not the Crown Court, and the former do not employ juries. The total number of cases entering Magistrates courts in England & Wales is around 1,400,000 per year. In contrast the number of cases entering the Crown court is “only” about 120,000 per year. Of these about 30,000 to 40,000 per year involve trial by jury, i.e., about 25% – 33% of the Crown court cases. The rest will mostly refer to cases where the defendant has pleaded guilty so no trial is required.

To quote a Brunel university article, “These proposals go far beyond the recommendations put forward in Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts, published in July 2025. Leveson proposed trial by judge alone where the defendant requested it, or in particularly lengthy and complex trials. But Lammy’s proposals appear to be a watering down of leaked MoJ plans to restrict the use of jury trials to only “public interest” cases with sentences of over five years”. The latter observation only raises even more concern that opinion in the MoJ is already calling for juryless trials in an even larger proportion of cases than Lammy is currently proposing, so we can be confident that that will be the direction of travel if the principle of trial by jury is once overturned.

There is currently a backlog in the Crown court of around 80,000 cases. Whilst there has always been a backlog, the lockdowns and social distancing rules during covid-19 were mostly responsible for the large increase in the backlog from which the system has not recovered.

The proposals will also increase the proportion of cases which can be addressed by Magistrates’ courts by increasing their powers of imprisonment to 18 months (from 12 months) with an intimation that this could be extended further to 24 months. But as of early 2026 the Magistrates courts also have a backlog – of a massive 361,000 cases.

Here we are seeing the weakness of the UK’s position as regards protecting rights that we have assumed we had, but which can be revoked by Parliament. Contrary to popular belief, Magna Carta does not guarantee jury trials, and any claim that it does would be unlikely to pass muster with legal authority today, though the spirit of that document is another matter. Nor does the Bill of Rights 1689 have anything to say about jury trials. The real basis of trial by jury is the common law. Historically, judges have upheld the principle as a bulwark against excessive State power.

But what if judges themselves become politically captured? In any case, the common law can be overridden by statute. That this is the case results from the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty. But that doctrine itself has arisen by historical evolution, as with our other constitutional principles.

Human Rights Act 1998 and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) do not mandate jury trials, only fair trials. Article 6 of the ECHR guarantees a fair and public hearing, but it does not require jury trial. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly held that non-jury trials can comply with Article 6, provided fairness is maintained. But who is to guarantee fairness if not “twelve good men and true”?

It would appear that we, the people, are at the mercy of Parliament without protections from constitutional principles that Parliament cannot overturn. Should the people ever regain control over our feral Parliament, this great constitutional matter must be rectified.

It is worth recalling the warning by jurist and legal philosopher Lord Patrick Devlin that “The first object of any tyrant… would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will; and next to overthrow or diminish trial by jury… trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution; it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives”. The lamp of freedom in the UK would appear to be sputtering and in real danger of going out.

Proposal for “Specialist” Courts for Domestic Abuse and Sexual Offences

The history of domestic abuse issues since 2014 has been summarised in my article Throwing Children to the Wolves. The rest of this section refers to the Courts and Tribunals Bill now before Parliament, and specifically amendments to the Bill now tabled. Many of the amendments are bids to include the feminist VAWB perspective more firmly into criminal legislation.

Anyone who does not appreciate the role that allegations of domestic abuse, including sexual offences, plays within the family courts – and hence with fatherlessness – has not been paying attention. One of the more egregious phenomena which arise in the context of parental separation is parental alienation (PA), a serious psychological assault on the affected children. The feminist axis has long denied the reality of PA, claiming it is merely a ruse for abusive men to deflect attention from their abuse. Consistent with this perspective, amendment NC20 to the Courts and Tribunals Bill, tabled by Jess Brown-Fuller (LibDem), would require courts to determine, on the balance of probability, if the domestic abuse allegations were valid before any claims of parental alienation would be considered. If abuse is deemed valid, a child’s reluctance to see the abusive parent would be presumed to be a justified response.

Amendments NC9 and NC10, also tabled by Jess Brown-Fuller, refer to the training of judges trying cases of domestic abuse, and specifically focus on VAWG.

Charlotte Nichols (Labour) and Stella Creasy (Labour) tabled amendment NC2 which would require “specialist courts” for sexual offences and domestic abuse cases. Such courts would be conducted with a jury and specialist judge. The amendment adds, “Additional guidance or directions may be formulated by the judiciary in relation to the nature and dynamics of behaviour including coercive control and honour-based abuse”. These “specialist courts” would, the amendment proposes, “incorporate best practice in hearing cases involving violence against women and girls, including ensuring fair and trauma-informed proceedings. Regulations under this section must make provision for such courts to have specialist facilities for alleged victims.”

(My comment: explicit mention of VAGW and means that, if enacted, this would be explicitly gendered law. Focus on “trauma-informed” would embedded a manipulative feminist strategy into law).

Dr Kieran Mullan (Conservative) proposed amendment NC25 which appears to overlap with NC2. Rather oddly for a Conservative MP he cites the Labour Party manifesto as motivation for raising the amendment. It calls for the setting up of “specialist courts” to address sexual offences. However, it makes no mention of juries. It calls for support from independent sexual violence advisers to be accessible to victims and specialist trauma training to be available for staff working in each such a court.