What would Chalk do?

How can we reduce trial delays of two or even three years in the Crown Court?

Yesterday, I reported a suggestion from the director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson that was promptly skewered in the comments section by

Ian Kelcey

and

Tom Crowther

.

Parkinson had also suggested that we might explore some ideas that had recently been backed by Alex Chalk KC, the former Conservative justice secretary. These would involve limiting the right to jury trial — a radical move, but one that might find favour with no less a figure than the lady chief justice of England and Wales, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill.

We know from the National Audit Office report yesterday that the Conservative government’s prison building programme will not produce the prison places that are said to be needed. One solution offered by the Ministry of Justice is a sentencing review that’s intended to ensure prisons do not run out of space again. But that review has a fundamental flaw, as Chalk told me when I went to see him at the chambers from which he now practises.¹

You can hear my interview with the former justice secretary — and a brief comment from Parkinson — in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks.

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