Founder of Starmer’s legal chambers condemns Labour plans to cut jury trials

Geoffrey Robertson says proposals to reduce backlog are betrayal of party’s values and a ‘cure worse than the disease’

The founder of Keir Starmer’s barristers’ chambers has condemned the planned restriction of jury trials in England and Wales as “a betrayal of the values for which Labour purports to stand”.

Geoffrey Robertson KC, founding head of Doughty Street Chambers, where the attorney general, Richard Hermer KC, and the justice secretary, David Lammy, also had their professional homes, has written a more than 9,000-word polemic to coincide with the committee stage of the courts and tribunals bill.