Justice secretary David Lammy has once again doubled down on plans to curb jury trials to cut the Crown court backlog.

Asked about his proposals during justice questions in the House of Commons this morning, Lammy said one-third of victims of sexual offences in the backlog have been waiting at least a year for a trial. In many of those cases, ‘there are also defendants playing the system, pleading late pre-hearing after pre-hearing, and witnesses then fall away and cases collapse. For that reason, it’s absolutely right that we change the threshold, introduce the measures that Sir Brian Leveson has properly looked at in order to speed up the process and get those victims justice’.