UK Trends and Developments Contributed by: Bambos Tsiattalou, Richard Cannon and Amjid Jabbar, Stokoe Partnership Solicitors
Potential Abolition of Jury Trials for Fraud Cases This is arguably the most consequential potential reform to the criminal justice system since the Crimi - nal Justice Act 1948, which abolished penal servitude, hard labour and the sentence of whipping. The recent - ly proposed abolition of jury trials for fraud cases cer - tainly divides opinion among lawyers and the wider public. Asked by the government to formulate proposals to tackle a record courts backlog, Sir Brian Leveson, who previously served as the President of the Queen’s Bench Division and Head of Criminal Justice, under - took an Independent Review of the Criminal Courts. In addressing the crisis in English and Welsh criminal courts, his subsequent report, published in July 2025, calls for significant investment and structural reforms. Among its 45 recommendations, a core recommenda - tion is that all serious and complex fraud cases should be tried by judge alone. Only defendants who face minor offences in a mag - istrates’ court are denied the right to a jury trial: this has been synonymous with the right to a fair trial in England and Wales since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. However, if Leveson’s recommendations were to be implemented, that right could be removed – not only for fraud, but also for a range of other serious offences. In addition to myriad challenges facing the criminal justice system, Leveson identifies an increase in the volume and type of evidence, and the amount of data in serious and complex fraud trials. However, it is not clear whether the jury system itself is central to the backlog problem. Practically, there are many who would question whether the upheaval caused by the abolition of juries in fraud trials justifies such a fundamental change. Philosophically, many more would object to the idea of removing juries, unnecessarily and unjustifiably, and dispensing with a core feature of the UK’s criminal jus - tice system that has endured for more than 800 years. The idea of abolishing juries in fraud cases is not new: it was first ventilated in the 1983 Roskill Report and
later in the 2001 Auld Review. The latter led to Section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which allowed prosecution applications for trials to be conducted without a jury. Although this legislation was enacted, provisions to permit trial without a jury in complex fraud cases did not come into force on the passage of the Act. Arguments for retaining and dispensing with jury trials are well rehearsed. Nevertheless, judges in fraud trials can also be prone to making mistakes. In July 2025, the Supreme Court unanimously over - turned convictions of conspiracy to defraud of two traders, Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, who had been convicted, respectively, of manipulating the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and the Euro Inter-Bank Offered Rate (EURIBOR). The Supreme Court found that their trial judges’ direc - tions to the juries were “inaccurate and unfair” and that the Court of Appeal was wrong to reject the “pre - viously uncontroversial proposition that a LIBOR or EURIBOR submission typically involved a selection from within a range of borrowing rates”. Delivering the Supreme Court judgment, Lord Legatt noted that the judge’s directions which “conflated the question whether the submission of a rate complied with the LIBOR definition with the question whether it represented the genuine opinion of the submitter… usurped the jury’s function and undermined the fair - ness of the trial”. The judgment concluded: “It is not possible to say that, if the jury had been properly directed, they would have been bound to return ver - dicts of guilty. The convictions are therefore unsafe and cannot stand.” HMRC Uptick in Criminal Investigations In the speech accompanying her Spring Statement, delivered in March 2025, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that HMRC will “crack down on tax evasion” and raise approximately GBP7.5 billion in revenue. She outlined measures designed to close the “tax gap”: the difference between the amount of tax that should be paid to HMRC and what is actually paid. By investing in the HMRC’s “capacity to crack down on tax avoidance”, she added, the government aims
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