Curbing Jury Trials. Digital ID Returns. When Did You Vote for This?
This week, Labour pushed ahead on two major changes to justice and state control — neither clearly put to voters before the election.
For months, I’ve been warning about two things moving quietly in the background: curbs on jury trials and digital ID by the back door. This week, Labour pushed ahead on both. MPs voted on 10 March 2026 to give the Courts and Tribunals Bill its second reading, while ministers also launched a consultation on a new digital identity system built around GOV.UK One Login and GOV.UK Wallet.
These are not minor technical tweaks. One affects how justice is delivered in England and Wales. The other affects how you prove who you are to the state. And in neither case was the public clearly asked for permission in plain English at the last election. Labour’s 2024 manifesto talked about reforming justice and tackling delays, but it did not clearly tell voters it would curb access to jury trial in this way, and it did not clearly set out a national digital ID system for accessing public services.
⚖️ Jury Trials Are Not the Cause of the Backlog
Labour says the Courts and Tribunals Bill is about reducing the backlog in the courts. Ministers argue the system is under huge strain and needs reform to free up time for more serious cases. But the central question is simple: Did juries cause this mess? Because if they did not, then curbing access to jury trial would not fix the root problem. It is shifting the cost of failure onto the public.
That is why the opposition from inside the legal profession matters so much. This is not just a few political opponents making noise. The Bar Council says 3,236 legal professionals signed an open letter urging Keir Starmer to stop the proposal, including more than 300 KCs, 22 retired judges, past and present Bar Council chairs, and a former Director of Public Prosecutions. Their verdict was blunt: the plan is “unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced.”
Their most devastating point is also the simplest one: juries have not caused this crisis. The legal profession is pointing instead to chronic underfunding as the real cause of the collapse in performance. So here is the real question: who do you trust more on this — the legal profession, or Starmer and Lammy? When thousands of people within the justice system warn that Labour is targeting a safeguard rather than the real problem, ministers cannot honestly pretend this is just harmless modernisation.
And a jury is not some outdated inconvenience. It is one of the last places where ordinary citizens still stand between the individual and the state. Plenty of defendants who choose a jury trial are convicted. But juries also bring common sense, independence and public scrutiny into the courtroom. Once you start treating jury trial as an obstacle to efficiency, you are no longer just fixing a backlog. You are changing the balance of power in the justice system.
📱 Digital ID Through the Back Door
The second move is digital ID. The government’s consultation says GOV.UK One Login and GOV.UK Wallet are intended to become a single “front door” to government, allowing people to prove who they are and store secure digital documents instead of relying on paper. Ministers are selling it as convenience, speed and modernisation. The consultation also says that without the government providing a “foundational digital ID”, many people will remain stuck with paper-based systems.
But this is exactly how these systems are always introduced. They are not pitched as control. They are pitched as making life easier. Less paperwork. Faster access. Fewer hoops to jump through. Yet once the infrastructure is built, the pressure to expand its use only grows. A system can begin as voluntary and still become hard to avoid in practice as more services are routed through it. That is how convenience turns into quiet compulsion.
And there is another reason for scepticism. Why should the public trust Darren Jones on digital ID when he has already shown he will say things on live television that do not match the facts? Jones is now fronting this consultation, but in June 2025, he said on BBC Question Time that “the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women.” Home Office data showed adult men made up around three-quarters of small-boat arrivals.
That matters because digital ID is not just another app. It is the creation of a new identity layer between the public and the state. Labour did not clearly ask voters for that. And once that architecture is in place, ministers will always be tempted to widen its use. Today, it is sold as an easier access to services. Tomorrow, it can become the default gateway for more and more parts of daily life.
⚠️ Final Thought: More Control, Less Consent
Step back and look at the pattern. A justice system weakened by years of failure becomes the excuse to chip away at the jury trial. An inefficient state becomes the excuse to build a national digital identity framework. In both cases, the answer from the government is the same: more centralisation, more control, fewer safeguards. And when the same ministers asking for that power have already shown they are willing to stretch the facts when it suits them, the public is right to be wary. On the evidence so far, this is not a government I would trust with something as sensitive as either of these changes.
✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions
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All this government does is to cover up its incompetence by lying to us. The dictatorial onslaughts are never ending and their complete disdain for the good hard working people who let's remember, pay their wages is disgusting.
Resist all of their communist dicktats, they have no legitimacy, even their backbenchers are revolting !