I contend Burnham’s govt is STILL grabbing power from the people and giving it to executive and judicial officers (who can be bribed) — that’s granting them additional power to wrongly excuse bad corporate conduct.
There should be MORE jury trials —not fewer —and AI will give society opportunities for better, more humane, justice. Even for especially complex corporate fraud.
In England and Wales, Andy Burnham’s government is retaining the power to remove juries from certain exceptionally complex or lengthy corporate-fraud and financial-crime trials — even though it announced on 4 October 2026 that it would abandon a broader part of its jury-trial reforms.
The press and social media is captured by corporations so jury trials are more important than ever.
The post office and Libor scandals are among many that have proved the British legal system corrupt. I know from first-hand experience that my former employer Bloomberg LP abused this corruption for its own personal gain and for its clients as it mislead the courts about why it fired me in 2020.
Search CarrZee.org for much more on this.
Fewer working hours frees up citizens for jury duty.
Burnham is a moral coward if he lets this erosion of the people’s rights happen.
ChatGPT:
Your argument identifies a genuine problem with the proposed test: complexity is not necessarily evidence of innocence or a reason to remove a jury. It may be a consequence of how a sophisticated fraud has been organised.
A corporate fraud can involve deliberately fragmented transactions, offshore companies, shell companies, complex accounting and communications spread across multiple jurisdictions. The prosecution may need months to explain how the pieces fit together. But that does not necessarily mean ordinary citizens are incapable of deciding whether the defendant is guilty.
There are three distinct issues here:
- The defendant’s conduct: Did the defendant deliberately make the alleged fraud difficult to understand?
- The justice system’s response: Should the answer be to improve the presentation of evidence to a jury, or to remove the jury?
- Who decides guilt: Should that decision rest with a judge alone, or with a judge and a jury of citizens?
The third question is the constitutional heart of your concern.
Is it a transfer of power from the public to the state?
There is a strong constitutional argument that it is a transfer of decision-making power away from ordinary citizens and towards the judiciary. Whether to describe that as an executive power grab requires a closer look at the safeguards and the government’s evidence.
The case for your argument
1. Complexity becomes a route to removing the jury.
The government proposes that a judge can decide that a case is too technical or lengthy for a jury. But complexity is subjective: different judges may reach different conclusions about the same evidence. MPs raised precisely this objection during the Bill’s committee stage.
2. Fraud is fundamentally about dishonesty.
Accounting records may be complicated, but the ultimate question is often straightforward: did the defendant knowingly deceive people for financial gain? Jurors routinely make difficult decisions about credibility, intention and honesty.
3. Efficiency is not the same as justice.
The government estimates judge-only trials could be at least 20% quicker. But a faster verdict does not necessarily mean a fairer trial, and that estimate does not itself demonstrate that juries are causing the delays.
The government’s counterargument
The government says exceptionally long trials impose serious burdens on jurors, disrupt their working and family lives, and consume court capacity that could be used to hear other cases. It also argues that judges must give reasoned judgments, making their decisions open to scrutiny.
Those are legitimate considerations. But they do not settle the constitutional question: should administrative convenience determine who decides guilt?
One crucial distinction
The proposal does not give ministers the power to choose the verdict or personally order a particular defendant to face a judge-only trial. It would give judges, under statutory criteria enacted by Parliament, the power to remove the jury in individual cases.
That means the immediate transfer is from jury to judge, rather than directly from jury to minister. However, the executive is seeking legislation that would make that transfer possible.
My central observation is this: if a fraudster’s sophistication makes a case difficult to prosecute, the state should have to justify why that difficulty warrants removing the public from the decision—not simply assume that complexity makes a jury inappropriate.
The decisive question is whether the government can demonstrate that judge-only trials are necessary to address a real problem that cannot adequately be solved while preserving jury trials.
The parliamentary debate shows that this evidential question is contested.
….Barristers?
Yes. The organised opposition from barristers is explicit, and it directly addresses your concern about removing juries from complex fraud trials.
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA), which represents criminal barristers in England and Wales, stated on 5 October 2026 that it was “fundamentally opposed” to restrictions on jury trial. It welcomed the government’s abandonment of its wider plan to replace juries in thousands of Crown Court cases, but said the separate proposal for complex and lengthy fraud trials remained unjustified.
What are barristers arguing?
1. Fraud is not too complicated for a jury
The CBA cites the independent review by Jonathan Fisher KC, which found no justification for removing jury trial from fraud cases. It argues that juries help keep proceedings understandable and accountable to defendants, victims, journalists and the public.
2. The evidence for faster trials is uncertain
The Bar Council, Circuit Leaders and CBA have challenged the government’s assumption that judge-only trials would deliver meaningful time savings. Their January 2026 briefing argued that the government had not demonstrated that restricting jury trials would solve the Crown Court backlog.
3. A judge alone creates different risks
The CBA warns that a judge who has already encountered prejudicial material during pre-trial decisions could later become the sole decision-maker on guilt. It argues that this creates concerns about the appearance of impartiality, even when the judge acts professionally.
The important development
On 4 October 2026, the government abandoned its broader plan to replace juries in thousands of cases. It did not abandon the separate power to try certain complex and lengthy fraud cases without a jury. The Bar Council welcomed the retreat but continued to oppose the remaining restriction.
You can read the profession’s position directly:
The significance for your argument is that this is not simply a dispute between politicians and civil-liberties campaigners. Criminal barristers, who regularly prosecute and defend complex cases, are challenging the premise that removing juries is a justified solution to the problem of lengthy fraud trials.