The Courts and Tribunals Bill: judge-only fraud trials, the end of the right to elect, and what it means before charge

The Courts and Tribunals Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons on 13 October 2026, by 301 votes to 193, and is now in the House of Lords. Most of the coverage that week was about what the Government had dropped: the proposed Bench Division, which would have sent a large share of Crown Court cases to a judge sitting without a jury. Far less was said about what stayed.

The Bill exists because of the backlog. Official figures put the Crown Court backlog at 80,061 cases at the end of March 2026, more than double the roughly 38,000 recorded at the end of 2019, and thousands of Crown Court trials have been listed into 2028 and beyond. Delay on that scale damages the criminal justice system for complainants and defendants alike, and nobody who works in the criminal justice system defends it. The Government says the only way to relieve that strain on the criminal justice system is to ration jury trials and reserve jury trials for the most serious cases. Solicitors, the Bar and most criminal practitioners, me included, do not accept that juries are the cause of the delay.

What stayed is a set of changes to who decides how a criminal case is tried. The accused person would lose the right to choose a jury for an either-way offence. Magistrates could sentence for up to two years for a single offence. Appeals from the magistrates' court would need permission. For anyone investigated for fraud or a financial offence, the most significant change is the one that survived almost without comment: a judge could order a complex or lengthy case to be tried without a jury, with no right of appeal against that order.

This is a Bill, not law, and nothing has yet changed in the criminal courts. The Lords may amend it, and most of it would come into force on dates set by regulations rather than on Royal Assent. This guide is for anyone under investigation or charged, their families, and the professionals who advise them. I have written this piece from the text of the Bill as it reached the Lords, HL Bill 57, rather than from the press coverage, and it sets out what each change would do and why the decision that matters most would increasingly be the one taken before charge.

At a glance

• Stage: Commons third reading 13 October 2026 (301 to 193). Now in the House of Lords.
• Dropped: the Bench Division. It does not appear in the Bill as brought from the Commons.
• Clause 1: removes the right to elect trial on indictment for an either-way offence. The magistrates' court would decide allocation.
• Clause 3: a new Part 6A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. A judge could order a trial without a jury in a complex or lengthy case where an offence is listed in a new Schedule 3ZA, which is built around fraud and financial crime. No right of appeal against the order.
• Clause 5: magistrates' court sentencing powers for a single either-way offence could be set by regulations at 6, 12, 18 or 24 months.
• Clause 6 and Schedule 2: appeals from the magistrates' court to the Crown Court would need permission.
• Clause 20: an independent review of whether the changes create differences in treatment by race or socio-economic status.

What is the Courts and Tribunals Bill?

The Courts and Tribunals Bill is the Government's legislation to reduce the Crown Court backlog by changing how criminal proceedings in the criminal courts of England and Wales are allocated, tried and appealed. The Crown Court caseload has produced significant delays across the criminal justice system, and the Bill is the Government's response to the Leveson review of the criminal courts, which recommended a series of proposed reforms to how jury trials are used. Part 1 deals with proceedings in the criminal courts, including allocation, trial without a jury, magistrates' sentencing powers, appeals, and evidence and special measures in sexual offence cases. Part 2 deals with other courts and tribunals business, including the Children Act 1989 presumption of parental involvement, tribunal leadership and the Crown Court in the City of London.

Part 2 also contains changes outside the criminal courts. It would remove the presumption of parental involvement inserted into section 1 of the Children Act 1989 in 2014, so that the courts no longer start from the assumption that a parent's involvement furthers a child's welfare, and it reorganises tribunal leadership. Those family and tribunal provisions are important, and the Children Act 1989 changes in particular will matter to many families, but parental involvement is a family law question and outside the scope of this guide. In short, the Courts and Tribunals Bill is introducing powers across criminal, family and tribunal justice, introducing powers for ministers to adjust sentencing limits by regulation, and introducing powers for judges to remove juries in some cases.

The criminal courts provisions are the ones that matter to anyone under investigation, and they are the subject of this piece.

Progress of the Bill: from second reading to the Lords

The Bill was introduced in the House of Commons in February 2026 and had its second reading on 10 March 2026, when MPs voted 304 to 203 in favour. It was examined line by line at committee stage by a Public Bill Committee in April, carried over into the 2026-27 session in May, and returned for report stage and third reading on 13 October 2026, when it passed by 301 votes to 193. It has since been brought from the Commons and printed for the House of Lords as HL Bill 57.

The Commons Justice Committee warned during its passage that the changes risked shifting pressure from the Crown Court to magistrates' courts that are already stretched, and the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association both opposed the jury proposals.

The Bench Division was dropped. The jury changes were not.

The Bill as introduced in February 2026 would have created a Crown Court Bench Division, in which a judge sitting alone would try cases where the likely sentence was not expected to exceed three years. That was the proposal that drew the most sustained opposition, including from legal professionals and from MPs on the Government's own side, and the Ministry of Justice announced on 4 October 2026 that it would remove it. It is not in HL Bill 57. The Lord Chancellor, Alex Norris, said he had heard the strength of feeling and decided to change course. Sir Brian Leveson's own recommendation had been a Bench Division of a judge sitting with two magistrates, not a judge alone. On 12 October the Government published its response to all 180 of Leveson's recommendations, alongside these proposed reforms.

Its removal was widely reported as the Government abandoning its jury reforms. That is not what happened, and the jury trials that remain under the Bill would be decided by different rules. Clause 1 (the right to elect), clause 3 (judge-only trials in complex or lengthy cases) and clause 5 (magistrates' sentencing powers) all remain in the Bill that went to the Lords.

Judge-only trials for complex and lengthy cases

What clause 3 would do

Clause 3 inserts a new Part 6A into the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Under the new section 42A, the Crown Court could order that a trial on indictment be conducted without a jury where four conditions are met:

1. the defendant is to be tried on indictment for one or more offences;
2. at least one offence is listed in Part 1 of new Schedule 3ZA;
3. none of the offences is an excluded offence; and
4. a preparatory hearing has been ordered under the Criminal Justice Act 1987 or the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.

Even then the court could make the order only if it is satisfied that the likely complexity or length of the trial, or both, makes it appropriate to sit without a jury, that it is not in the public interest for the trial to be conducted with a jury, and that there are no other reasons why a jury trial would be more appropriate. The prosecution and the defence must be given the opportunity to make representations, and the court must consider them.

The order for trial by a judge alone can be made at any time before the trial begins, which the Bill defines as the opening of the prosecution case.

The offences it covers

Schedule 3ZA is, in substance, a list of lengthy fraud and financial cases, the complex cases the Government says take the longest to try with a jury. It includes:

Homicide and serious sexual offences that can only be tried on indictment are excluded. If any offence on the indictment is excluded, the power is not available at all.

The list may not stay as it is. Part 2 of Schedule 3ZA would allow the Secretary of State to add offences to the list, or remove them, by order, and MPs objected at report stage that this would let judge-only trial be extended to other complex cases without the full scrutiny of Parliament. For anyone under investigation for a lengthy fraud and financial matter today, that is a reason to take the charging stage seriously now.

No right of appeal against the order

Section 42A(5) provides that there is no right of appeal against a decision to make, or not to make, an order for trial without a jury. The representations made before the order is made are therefore the only opportunity to argue the point. For a person whose case is heading towards a long fraud trial, that hearing would carry a weight that few pre-trial hearings currently do. The only later route would be to challenge the conduct of a trial by a single judge on appeal against conviction. Judicial review is unlikely to fill the gap: section 29(3) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 excludes the Crown Court's decisions in matters relating to trial on indictment from that route, and an order about the mode of trial is very likely to be such a matter.

There is no right to trial by jury in the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 6 guarantees a fair trial, not a jury, so the Convention alone would not prevent judge-alone trial in these cases.

Who it would apply to

The order applies to any trial beginning on or after a day to be specified, whether or not the pre-trial hearing was ordered before that day. A case that is already under investigation, or already charged, when the Bill becomes law would not be protected by the timing of the charge.

The right to elect jury trial would go

Criminal offences fall into three groups, and the Bill changes the rules for one of them. Summary offences are tried in the magistrates' court. An indictable only offence, such as murder or robbery, can only be tried in the Crown Court, and the Bill does not change that. Triable either way cases sit in between, and they are the cases this Bill targets. At present, a person charged with an either-way offence can insist on a Crown Court trial with a jury even where the magistrates have accepted jurisdiction: the defendant elects, and the court must follow that choice. Under the existing rules, that is the accused person's automatic right. Clause 1 would remove that right. The allocation process would be decided by the court, and the accused person would no longer have the final say. Clause 2 makes the equivalent change where a written guilty plea is indicated: the accused would be invited to make representations about whether the magistrates' sentencing powers would be adequate, rather than having a right to object to the venue.

The practical effect is that representations on venue, and an early and realistic assessment of the likely sentence, would decide where a case is tried. We cover jury trial and allocation in more detail in our forthcoming guide to trial by jury.

Magistrates' court sentencing powers

Clause 5 would amend the Sentencing Act 2020 so that the Secretary of State could, by regulations (secondary legislation, which needs no further Act of Parliament), set the general limit on the custodial sentence a magistrates' court can impose for a single either-way offence at 6, 12, 18 or 24 months. It also adjusts the limit for consecutive terms for two or more offences. The Bill does not itself choose a figure.

The link to clause 1 is direct. Magistrates' court sentencing powers decide which triable either way cases stay in the magistrates' court, because a case is sent up only where the likely sentence exceeds what the magistrates can impose. If magistrates' court sentencing powers rise to 24 months for a single offence, a custodial sentence of up to two years could be passed without any Crown Court trial, and without a jury. A longer custodial sentence would still require the Crown Court. The figure is set by secondary legislation, so ministers could raise it later without returning to Parliament for a new Act, which is why the use of secondary legislation here matters as much as the starting figure. A wider sentencing power means more cases can properly stay in the magistrates' court, and without the right to elect, the accused person could not take them out of it.

Appeals from the magistrates' court

Clause 6 and Schedule 2 would change the appeals process from the magistrates' court to the Crown Court. At present a person convicted in the magistrates' court has an automatic right of appeal to the Crown Court, and an appeal against conviction is a full rehearing of the case. The Bill would introduce a permission stage. Under the new section 108A of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980, an appeal would need permission, granted only if the Crown Court considers it reasonably arguable that there are grounds for allowing it, and the permission decision would normally be made without a hearing. On an appeal against conviction, the Crown Court would allow the appeal if it considers the conviction unsafe, and dismiss it otherwise.

A person would have to seek permission before any re-hearing. At a full rehearing in the Crown Court, new evidence can be called and the case is decided afresh; the permission stage means many people would never reach that re-hearing, and the permission stage would usually be decided on paper. The automatic right of appeal has long been regarded as a vital safeguard against wrongful convictions in the magistrates' court, and the Bill would replace it with a filter. Combined with clauses 1 and 5, this means more cases would be tried in the magistrates' court and fewer of those convictions would be reheard.

The independent review

A clause added at Commons report stage, now clause 20, requires the Lord Chancellor to appoint an independent reviewer to examine whether the jury, allocation, sentencing and appeal provisions in the criminal courts have created or exacerbated differences in treatment or outcomes between defendants of different racial groups or socio-economic status. An interim report is due within two years of the first of those provisions coming into force, and a final report within five.

When would it come into force?

Not yet, and not all at once: the criminal courts will not change overnight. Under clause 26:

• the power to raise magistrates' sentencing powers (clause 5) and the independent review (clause 20) would commence two months after Royal Assent;
• the right-to-elect, judge-only trial and appeal provisions would commence on dates set by regulations.

The Bill is in the House of Lords, where it may be amended, and no Lords stage dates had been published when this piece was written.

What this means if you are under investigation now

For most people, the changes in this Bill share one feature: they take decisions about how criminal trials are conducted away from the accused person and give them to the court. That is a significant shift in the criminal justice system, and it moves the weight of criminal proceedings earlier, towards the decisions taken before anyone reaches a courtroom. For justice to be done, those early decisions have to be got right, because the later safeguards of the justice system would be narrower than they are today. The venue would no longer be the accused person's choice. In a large fraud or financial case, whether there is a jury at all could be decided at a single pre-trial hearing, with no appeal. An appeal from the magistrates would need permission.

I have prosecuted and defended cases in both the magistrates' court and the Crown Court, and in my experience the stage at which a case is easiest to change is the earliest one. The decision that would remain open to influence is the one that comes before all of them: whether to charge, and with what. That decision is made on the material in front of the prosecutor at the time, and it can be addressed before it is made, through written pre-charge representations that engage the evidential and public interest tests directly. We explain how that decision is made in our guide to how the CPS decides to charge.

In financial cases the choice of charge matters even more under this Bill, because the offence selected decides whether Schedule 3ZA is engaged at all. Our guides to fraud by false representation, insider dealing and market abuse and money laundering under POCA cover the offences most often in issue, and our guide to dawn raids covers how many of these investigations begin.

There is a funding point too. In the magistrates' court, legal aid depends on a means test and an interests of justice test; in the Crown Court, legal aid is means-tested with contributions. Keeping more triable either way cases in the magistrates' court, and fewer jury trials, changes which legal aid regime applies. My firm does not hold a legal aid contract, so I say this as an observer: anyone facing criminal proceedings of this kind should understand how the case will be funded before the allocation decision is made, not after.

Where a charge has already been brought, we put the same analysis to the prosecution and seek a review of the charging decision and, where the evidence does not support it, a discontinuance.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the Courts and Tribunals Bill?

It is Government legislation, introduced in February 2026, that would change how criminal cases in England and Wales are allocated, tried and appealed, in order to reduce the Crown Court backlog. It passed its third reading in the House of Commons on 13 October 2026 and is now in the House of Lords. It is not yet law.

Is the UK Government proposing to remove jury trials?

Not entirely. The proposed Bench Division, which would have removed juries from a large share of Crown Court cases, was dropped before the Commons vote. The Bill would still remove the right to elect jury trial for either-way offences and allow a judge to order a complex or lengthy fraud or financial case to be tried without a jury. Homicide and serious sexual offences that can only be tried on indictment are excluded from judge-only trial.

What are the new sentencing powers for magistrates' courts?

The Bill would allow the Secretary of State, by regulations, to set the maximum custodial sentence a magistrates' court can impose for a single either-way offence at 6, 12, 18 or 24 months. The Bill does not fix the figure. That power would come into force two months after Royal Assent.

Which offences could be tried by a judge alone?

The offences listed in new Schedule 3ZA to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which centre on fraud, tax evasion, false accounting, insider dealing, money laundering, terrorist property and bribery. A pre-trial hearing of that kind must have been ordered, and the judge must be satisfied that the complexity or length of the trial makes judge-alone trial appropriate and that the other statutory conditions are met.

Can I appeal against an order for trial without a jury?

No. The Bill provides that there is no right of appeal against a decision to make, or not to make, the order. The representations made before the order is made are the opportunity to argue it.

Does the Bill affect cases that are already under investigation?

Potentially, yes. The judge-only trial provision would apply to any trial that begins on or after a day to be specified, regardless of when the pre-trial hearing was ordered. The date of the investigation or the charge would not take a case outside it.

Lex Vindico Group is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We represent individuals nationally across England and Wales in criminal, regulatory, and parallel-proceedings defence at every stage, and most decisively, at the pre-charge stage.

This article is written by Akram Mula, LLM, Solicitor Advocate and CPS-approved Prosecutor, founder of Lex Vindico Group. It is general legal information about the Courts and Tribunals Bill as brought from the House of Commons in October 2026, not legal advice on any specific case. The Bill may be amended before it becomes law. For advice on your specific circumstances, contact our team directly.