LABOUR is attacking the “traditional British form of justice” by proposing to end jury trials and restricting protests by farmers, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Richard Fuller has said.
He told GB News: “Conservatives believe in peaceful protests, and there are no more peaceful protesters than our farmers. In fact, I’ve just passed three tractors there, parked up with the police talking to people about why they are there.
“Of course, our farmers should have the right to come to London to press their case on the disastrous decision that Rachel Reeves made last year which is having a real impact on family farms. So of course, my colleague Neil O’Brien was right.
“Farmers should have the right to protest. That’s a British tradition. We’ve got to stop these Labour attacks on our traditional British form of justice.”
On Justice Secretary David Lammy’s proposals to end jury trials for most crimes, he said: “Well, I think it’d be the wrong thing to do. We’ve had this right in our country, it’s one of those signal rights about British justice that countries and people are under oppression always look to, that you get the chance in England to have a trial if you’ve done something wrong by a jury of your peers.
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“But what makes this doubly bad is that David Lammy is being such a hypocrite because he, in his own words, has said in the past that jury trials are important and that we should increase the amount of time that judges sit and juries are called so that people can continue to expect that traditional British right.”
Asked if he supported rises in the national living wage and the minimum wage, he said: “We’ve got to look at those things in the round. A lot of small businesses, remember, most people, most young people, for sure, get their first job by working for a small business.
“We know that business confidence at the moment is at an all-time low. I think the Institute of Directors in their most recent survey said it was at an all time low, and they pointed to this increase in the cost base for employing people as part of that reason for the lack of confidence.
“So of course, it’s nice when people can get an increase in pay, but if you take last year’s increase and this year’s increase in the minimum wage, not the living wage, but the minimum wage, that’s a 25% increase in the cost of employing a young person. That will have an effect on whether businesses want to take the risk by taking someone who is new and perhaps unskilled and train them up.
“When you layer on top of that, Labour’s job-destroying Employment Rights Bill, which will put more regulations on small businesses, you look at the round of all that, and you have to say, what is that going to do to the employment prospects around people to get job in the first place?”
