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After months of uncertainty, the government is pressing ahead with its plans to curb the right to trial by jury in England and Wales. Legislation is to be introduced “next month”, a minister says. Sir Brian Leveson expects the government to publish its bill even sooner, he tells me in this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks.

The former head of criminal justice was talking to me about the second and final part of his report on the criminal courts, which recommends no fewer than 135 efficiency improvements. But inevitably we spent much of the interview discussing the structural reforms Leveson had recommended in part one of his review last July.

The most eye-catching of these is a new bench division of the crown court, which will try cases without a jury. Leveson thought it should consist of a judge and two magistrates but the government says it will be a judge sitting alone.

He was careful not to comment on the government’s proposals — or indeed on whether ministers might let magistrates sit in the bench division if concessions have to be made in the House of Lords. But Leveson was perfectly happy to tell me why he stood by his original recommendations — those that ministers had accepted and those they had not.

My column for this week’s Law Society Gazette looks at how Leveson’s initial proposals were handled by the government. It also reports how he feels about the government’s decision to remove a defendant’s right to choose jury trial on charges that can be tried in the magistrates’ court. He would have limited the right to elect trial by jury rather than abolished it outright.

Pieces I write for the Gazette are always free to read. The Gazette also carries a two-page analysis of Leveson’s latest recommendations by Monidipa Fouzder.

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