The UK government has confirmed its plans to introduce what it calls “Canadian-style juryless trials”, claiming they will help to cut delays in criminal justice system — which lawyers have disputed.

David Lammy, the UK’s deputy prime minister and justice secretary, said the government was “putting victims before tradition for tradition’s sake” by abandoning the ancient right to a jury trial.

The Ministry of Justice estimates that judge-only trials will take 20 per cent less time than a jury trial.

Around a quarter of cases that would otherwise have to wait to be heard by a jury will be fast-tracked to go before a judge, it says.

However, practitioners have said juries are not to blame for the significant backlog of cases in the English and Welsh courts.

Barbara Mills KC, chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales, said: “We have continuously opposed proposals to curtail jury trials because there is no evidence that their removal would reduce the backlog nor has it been set out how an alternative system would be resourced.

“Replacing juries with a judge alone is not the answer — according to the Institute for Government, few European countries allow lengthy sentences to be passed down by a single judge.

“And as the Lord Chancellor’s own report in 2017 confirmed, juries enjoy public trust in part because they deliver equitable findings — regardless of ethnicity.

“We urge the government to reconsider pursuing radical changes under the mistaken belief that radical equals effective.”

Brett Dixon, vice-president of the Law Society of England and Wales, added: “Allowing a single judge, operating in an under resourced system, to decide guilt in a serious and potentially life changing case is a dramatic departure from our shared values.

“The government cannot justify stripping away this fundamental right without publishing clear evidence that putting more cases in the hands of a single judge will tackle the horrendous backlogs in our courts.”