| This country is now so brassic… 08:57 - Nov 26 with 646 views | chicoazul |
….shambolic and wizened that one of our final ancient rights is to be removed cos it costs money. And people carry on about “boat people” like it is in any way whatsoever important.
https://www.theguardian.com/la |  |
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| This country is now so brassic… on 09:06 - Nov 26 with 591 views | SuperKieranMcKenna |
Removal of jury trials, classing protestors as terrorists, compulsory digital ID’s, none of this authoritarianism was in the manifesto. Think people need to look closer to home than all the things going on across the pond. |  | | |
| This country is now so brassic… on 09:15 - Nov 26 with 541 views | Trequartista |
From Nigel Farage to Jeremy Corbyn and everyone in between Lammy has managed to unite everyone in disgust at these plans. |  |
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| This country is now so brassic… on 09:26 - Nov 26 with 479 views | Swansea_Blue |
Wizened is a marvellous descriptor; shrunken and hollowed out with decades of an obsession with “efficiency” that stripped away vital redundancy in systems and over a decade of ideologically-driven austerity that left us with no national resilience to anything when we needed it during the pandemic. Our legal system is Donald Ducked, along with most government services.
It needs a ton of cash thrown at it if we want it to work, but that’s not going to happen. I wouldn’t mind ideas like this if they were intended to be temporary, but the removal of jury trials has been going on for a long time and this is just the next step. This proposal seems to be a dusting off of proposals New Labour tried to get through years back (Auld Review, etc). |  |
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| This country is now so brassic… on 09:41 - Nov 26 with 425 views | DJR |
Is it any wonder that the criminal justice system is in the state it is, given the following from the IFS?
It has been the easy target for spending cuts, and recent increases haven't made up for past cuts, but the legal profession has been raising this issue for years.
As I have said before, austerity has its consequences, and if reports are to be believed the proposals on juries (which go beyond those proposed by Lord Leveson) are driven by the fact that Reeves will be looking to make more savings when it comes to non-protected departments.
https://ifs.org.uk/publication
1. Spending on the justice system of England and Wales has increased in recent years. The total MoJ budget in 2025–26 (of £13.5 billion in today’s prices) is set to be around one-third higher in real (inflation-adjusted) terms than in 2019–20 (£10.1 billion). There have been particularly large increases in the department’s budget for capital investment, which is set to more than treble over that six-year period.
2. Recent funding injections come on the back of, and in most cases do not offset, severe budget cuts in the 2010s. Justice spending peaked in 2007–08. The resource (day-to-day) budget, which comprises around 85% of the total, fell by one-third (33%) in real terms between 2007–08 and 2016–17. In 2025–26, real-terms day-to-day spending by the MoJ is still set to be 14% lower than in 2007–08, and 24% lower in per-person terms (adjusting for population growth in England and Wales). Strikingly, real-terms day-to-day justice spending in 2025–26 is set to be no higher than it was in 2002–03, almost a quarter of a century earlier, and around 16% lower in per-person terms.
3. MoJ capital funding was cut by 70% over the early 2010s and, within this, capital funding for both HM Courts and Tribunals Service and HM Prison and Probation Service was cut by more than 90%. Capital funding was then increased after 2016, and sharp funding injections in recent years have taken the MoJ capital budget to a planned £2.0 billion in 2025–26, more than treble its pre-pandemic level and around 50% above its level prior to the cuts of the 2010s. Yet between 2007–08 and 2025–26, cumulative MoJ capital spending was 16% lower than it would have been had spending instead been maintained at its 2007–08 real-terms level for that entire period.
4. Between the early 2000s and the late 2010s, the MoJ tended to fare worse than the average government department: it saw smaller budget increases in the 2000s, and larger cuts in the 2010s. Between 2007–08 and 2016–17, a 33% cut to the MoJ day-to-day budget compares to a 3% cut to total day-to-day departmental spending, a 3% cut to the Department for Education, a 6% cut to the Ministry of Defence, and a 25% increase to the Department of Health and Social Care day-to-day budget. Other (non-health, non-education, non-defence, non-justice) departmental budgets fell by 22%, meaning justice also did worse than the average ‘unprotected’ department.
5. In contrast, from around 2019, the justice budget has (to a modest degree) been prioritised relative to other departments, doing better than average (especially in terms of capital funding). This was also true at the 2024 Autumn Budget, where the MoJ was a relative winner: its budget for 2024–25 was topped up by around £1 billion relative to previous plans, and its total budget is set to grow at an average real rate of 5.6% between 2023–24 and 2025–26 (versus 4.3% for departmental spending as a whole).
6. This recent period of relative largesse has not been enough to offset the previous period of spending restraint, however. Had the MoJ day-to-day budget increased at the same rate as the average department over the period since 2007–08, it would have been some 41% (£4.5 billion) higher in 2024–25. If it had grown in line with the average ‘unprotected’ department, it would have been 9% (£1.0 billion) higher.
7. The major components of the MoJ budget are HM Prison and Probation Service (a £5.3 billion day-to-day budget in 2023–24, 47% of the total), HM Courts and Tribunals Service (£2.3 billion, 20%) and the Legal Aid Agency (£2.2 billion, 19%). Of these major components, HM Courts and Tribunals Service has been relatively protected since 2007–08. Its day-to-day budget experienced smaller cuts in the early 2010s and (after adjusting for changes in how fee income is recorded) was 3% lower in real terms in 2023–24 than in 2007–08. This contrasts to the much larger cuts to HM Prison and Probation Service (11% lower in 2023–24 than in 2007–08) and, especially, the Legal Aid Agency (29% lower). The latter largely stems from deliberate policy changes, such as the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) in 2012. In per-person terms, day-to-day spending on all of these areas was substantially lower in 2023–24 than in 2007–08 – in the case of legal aid, 36% lower. After falling to almost zero in the mid-2010s, capital funding for HM Courts and Tribunals Service and HM Prison and Probation Service has increased in recent years, with the latter the biggest recipient (more than 80% of the increase in MoJ capital spending between 2019–20 and 2023–24 went to HM Prison and Probation Service).
8. Looking ahead, the outlook for justice spending in England and Wales is uncertain. At the time of writing, the government’s spending plans – due to be confirmed at the Spending Review in June 2025 – would see overall day-to-day public service funding grow by an average 1.3% per year in real terms between 2025–26 and 2028–29. Given reasonable assumptions about what might happen to ‘protected’ budgets such as the NHS, the Ministry of Defence, overseas aid and childcare, this would leave other ‘unprotected’ budgets – potentially including the MoJ – facing real-terms cuts. Plans can change but, on the face of it, the justice system of England and Wales is facing another period of retrenchment. [Post edited 26 Nov 2025 9:46]
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