Labour MP Attacks Plan To Scrap Most Jury Trials After Revealing She Was Raped
A Labour MP has condemned David Lammy’s plan to scrap most jury trials after revealing for the first time that she had been raped.
Charlotte Nichols accused the justice secretary of using victims as a “cudgel” to force the controversial reforms through.
The government wants to get rid of juries in cases where the sentence is expected to be less than three years.
Ministers say the move is necessary to clear the huge backlog of court cases in England and Wales.
But critics say the planned reforms, contained in the Court and Tribunals Bill, will remove a fundamental right while not actually solving the problem.
During a Commons debate on the bill, Nichols said she had waited 1,088 days for her case to get to court.
The MP for Warrington North said: “Every single one of those days was agony, made worse by having a role in public life that meant that the mental health consequences of my trauma were played out in public, with the event that led to my eventual sectioning for my own safety still being something that I receive regular social media abuse from strangers about to this day.
“But here’s the kicker, in this debate, experiences like mine feel like they’ve been weaponised and are being used for rhetorical misdirection, for what this bill actually is.
“The violence against women and girls sector haven’t had the opportunity to come together to discuss it, and the government’s framing and narrative has been to pit survivors and defendants against each other in a way I think is deeply damaging.
“We have been told that if we have concerns about this bill, it is because we have not been raped or because we don’t care enough for rape victims.
“The opposite is true in my case, it is because I have been raped that I am as passionate as I am about what it means for a justice system to be truly victim focused.
“It is because I have endured every indignity that our broken criminal justice system could mete out that I care what kind of reform will actually deliver justice for survivors and victims of crime more widely.”
She added: “There is so much that we can be doing for rape victims that isn’t [David Lammy] using them as a cudgel to drive through reforms that aren’t directly relevant to them.”
