Some politicians have as their personal mantra quotes from great leaders of history. Sarah Sackman’s comes from her bootcamp instructor. The courts minister and MP for Finchley and Golders Green can be found in her time off running around in a field lifting weights and doing press-ups, as her coach exhorts her to “go with the plan, not with the mood”. This is, she says, a good lesson for politics. She acknowledges that “as a government, there have been times when perhaps we’ve allowed the mood to deviate from the plan”.
Sackman is determined not to allow that to happen on her patch, but the pressure is on. The Ministry of Justice is on Tuesday (10 March) attempting the biggest overhaul since the 1970s of a system that is evidently in crisis. In recent years, the full impact of the funding cuts of the Conservatives’ austerity agenda have become apparent. Court buildings have been sold off, or neglected to the point that they are crumbling. There is a staffing shortage across the system, from barristers and judges to probation and prison officers. The Crown Court backlog now stands at more than 80,000 cases, with people waiting years for their cases to be heard.
In response, the government has put forward radical proposals, including a controversial plan to restrict jury trials to only the most serious cases. Defendants in so-called either-way cases can currently choose whether they are tried in a magistrates court or in the Crown Court by a jury – between 2014 and 2022, the proportion opting for a jury trial more than doubled. Under the proposals, the courts would make the decision for them. There would also be a new tier of judge-only “swift courts” introduced to hear cases with a likely sentence of three years or less.
The suggestion has sparked fierce backlash from the legal profession, civil liberties campaigners, the Conservatives (it was one of Robert Jenrick’s favourite topics before he defected to Reform), and even backbench Labour MPs. One – former criminal barrister Karl Turner – has threatened to stand down as an MP and force a by-election if the government doesn’t U-turn, condemning the plans as being all about saving money.
Sackman, herself a former human rights barrister, sees it differently. I meet her in a café in Finchley around the corner from her consistency office shortly after she defended the plans in the Commons, declaring she would still be doing this even if there wasn’t a crisis in the courts system. “This is ideological,” she tweeted at the time, appearing to contradict the government line that it was the spiralling backlog which made reforms necessary.
“I’m making a case for something that I think is the right thing to do,” she tells me over an Americano. “The crisis is how do we get the waiting lists down. But my job is to not just stick a plaster over that and make it better in the short term, but to take the opportunity to create a system that is fairer and sustainable – and frankly better.”
I point out that this is something of a change of heart. In 2021, when it was a Conservative government floating the idea of limiting jury trials and Sackman had not yet even been selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Finchley and Golders Green, she stressed “the importance of juries” on Twitter. What changed?
“When you come into government, you move from being a campaigner, often representing a sectional interest, representing the interest of your client, to looking at what is best for the system and what is best for the public,” she replies.
The government’s argument is that the current justice system is unsustainable and failing victims. Defendants eyeing the multi-year backlogs can play the system, opting for a jury trial where delays are longer in the hope that witnesses will drop out and the case will collapse. Removing that choice will free up the Crown Court for the most serious crimes. As Sackman pointed out in parliament at the end of last year, right now someone accused of shoplifting a bottle of whisky can be “ahead in the queue” of someone waiting for a rape trial. The impact on victims is devastating.
Set against that are a number of objections. Jenrick’s line of attack was to accuse the government of a plan that “casually casts aside centuries of English liberty” dating back to Magna Carta. (Sackman counters that the Magna Carta also codifies that justice delayed is justice denied.) The Bar Council and Criminal Bar Association are both adamantly against the curtailment of jury trials, warning that “diminishing the constitutional principle of trial by jury will erode trust in our criminal justice system”. “Trial by jury is fundamental to the British way of life” argued the CBA last year. There are concerns about the diversity of the judiciary and what this could mean for minority communities, and of the potential risks to judges themselves who rule on controversial high-profile cases. Unlike jurors, judges will be named and compelled to provide reasoning for their decisions.
Doubts have been raised about what impact the reforms would actually have on the crisis; a recent report from the Institute for Government warns that judge-only trials will save a mere 2 per cent of court time. There has also been confusion as to whether the reforms would even make a difference to the 80,000 cases currently “in the queue” (the government now says they could be applied to cases currently waiting for Crown Court date – which risks triggering appeals on the basis that legislation should not be retrospective), and pressure on the government from MPs to include a sunset clause repealing the changes once the backlog is under control. Finally, there is the fact that Labour did not mention making changes to a cornerstone of British justice in its 2024 manifesto, promising only to “reform the justice system to put the needs of victims first”.
Sackman, however, is adamant. She has chosen to meet at this coffee shop, she tells me, because it is next door to Barnet court, recently reopened after a year-long closure which forced locals to travel for hours across London to seek justice because the building was crumbling. “That’s the symbol if ever you needed one, right on my doorstep staring me in the face. You need modernisation,” she says. Key to that is investment (Rachel Reeves committed an additional £450m a year for the courts system in the 2025 Spending Review, to open new courts and increase sitting days), and addressing the critical failures at every stage that exacerbate delays: staff shortages, failures with the contractors paid to transport defendants, and the dismal state of many of the buildings themselves. But for Sackman, rethinking which crimes are eligible for a jury trial is also part of “modernisation”.
“When I say I’ve got an ideological commitment to building a system that works for the citizen, my responsibility is not to the legal profession, it’s not to the judiciary, it’s not to the civil service, it’s to the citizens of this country,” she insists.
As for dubious Labour MPs, Sackman describes herself as “over-caffeinated by the number of coffees I’ve been having with colleagues” to try to win them round. Turner, she argues, does not speak for Labour backbenchers even if he is making a lot of noise. She reels off a list of female MPs “who know how the system is failing people like them and their constituents”, adding “I am confident that we’ll get the vote through.”
Not everyone will share that confidence. Over and over again Keir Starmer’s government has buckled under pressure, U-turning on policies rather than going out to make the case for what it is trying to do. Restricting jury trials is one of the most contentious ideas it has put forward yet. For weeks there have been rumours of a climb-down. To return to the bootcamp motto, the plan is at odds with the mood. The government introduced its courts legislation at the end of February and it gets its second reading in the Commons on Tuesday 10 March. We will see then if Sackman’s determination pays off.
Entering Westminster can be jarring for a new MP. But for all the travails of the past 18 months of the Starmer government, Sackman seems just as energetic and upbeat as when I met her in summer 2024, pounding the pavements in her campaign to win a seat from the Tories. She exudes the relentless motivational pep of school netball captain (she is one of Westminster’s many former head girls), talking about feeling “empowered” and having “agency” whenever various setbacks emerge. When I ask how she’s coped with the pressures of ministerial life, she admits “I know it sounds a little bit jolly hockey sticks… This is the best job I’ve ever had. It is my dream job and I want to make every single day count.”
It helps that this constituency – the former stomping ground of Margaret Thatcher and the epicentre of the UK’s Jewish community – is also home. Sackman grew up in Finchley; her parents are still here, she and her family attend a local synagogue. She stood as the Labour candidate in 2015, having been radicalised by defending campaigners trying to save a local library from closure amid Tory cuts. The experience of having lost once, she says, “keeps you honest. It means you’re always honing the argument.”
Before law she studied history, writing her dissertation on “Jews and African Americans in the Spanish Civil War” at Cambridge, where her path crossed with Wes Streeting’s. “Wes was a political talent even aged 19,” she says, slightly tongue-in-cheek. While the health secretary spent his university days enmeshed in student politics and getting himself elected as head of the Cambridge University Students’ Union (CUSU), Sackman threw herself into drama. Highlights include acting in a Lorca play performed entirely in Spanish (she is fluent thanks to her grandmother, a Sephardic Jew from northern Spain), and an outdoor production of The Merchant Of Venice (“Wes was probably off doing a stump speech about being CUSU president”).
When I ask what she makes of Streeting’s evident ambition for the top job in politics, I get another netball captain answer: “It’s a team sport, Wes is a huge talent in this government. He’s a brilliant communicator and he’s doing a brilliant job”. She agrees with Streeting’s tip that Labour’s focus should be to “get it right first time”.
What about the dire state of the polls and the very real prospect of losing the next election? She doesn’t flinch, saying she asks herself constantly: “what if you’ve only got three years left Sarah?” For motivation, she returns to her Spanish roots, listening to flamenco-influenced pop; when the Spanish pop star Rosalía descends on London this summer, Sackman will be there. The courts minister has thought a lot about the history of flamenco and how it relates to Labour politics. “It comes from the marginalised and the oppressed… If you want to understand why we need to work to effect change and bring dignity to people, it’s in songs. If you put that in your headphones every morning, you know why you’re coming to work.”
All the flamenco music in the world cannot change the reality that the last year and a half has been brutal for Labour MPs. The war in Gaza has split the party, dividing communities on the left and reopening deep wounds as the government has tried to navigate both its foreign policy response and the rise in domestic anti-Semitism.
For Sackman, the most senior Jewish frontbench MP representing the UK’s most Jewish constituency, it has been particularly painful. The ramifications of the Hamas attacks on October 7th and the Israeli government’s military response have reverberated through both Muslim and Jewish communities across the world – with tragic outcomes. On Yom Kippur last year, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, two worshippers were killed at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester when a man drove his car into pedestrians and then attempted to go on a stabbing spree. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood later called it “an evil act of anti-Semitic terrorism”.
“I heard the news on my way into synagogue with my two little girls,” Sackman tells me. “I could see these ashen faces as the news rippled across the synagogue. And in that moment, all I wanted to do was be with my community and cry. But I had to step outside, I had to turn on my phone, I had to text the Home Secretary back, and I had to make sure that our local police was adding patrols and providing extra security to our local synagogue. And you have to, in that moment, put on your professional persona.”
She is, she says, intently aware that many of Britain’s Jewish community no longer feel safe. Some even worry about whether they have a future in this country. But while Sackman is pushing for more security of Jewish spaces, Holocaust education and anti-Semitism training in British institutions like the NHS, she rejects the notion that Britain is no longer a home for Jews. “I’ll be absolutely damned if Jewish people in this country feel any less sense of belonging, any less that this is their place.”
To illustrate her point, she tells me about attending a Chanukah service at Downing Street two months after the Heaton Park attack and in the immediate aftermath of the Bondi Beach shootings in Australia, when gunmen opened fire on attendees of a Jewish-organised candle lighting event. At such a dark time, it meant something to be celebrating the Jewish festival of lights in the home of the Prime Minister. “That says something about who we are as a country.” She adds with a touch of defiance that British Jews belong as much as any other community. “That’s a remarkable thing, and something you shouldn’t take for granted.”
There is an ugly sectarian streak growing stronger in British politics. The populist right seized upon the pro-Palestinian marches that swept through cities after October 7, warning that Britain risks being taken over by Islamists and co-opting rising anti-Semitism in their narrative about the dangers of immigration. While the marches have died down, the rhetoric has not. The Green Party’s recent win in the Gorton and Denton by-election triggered a wave of accusations. Nigel Farage called it “a victory for sectarian voting and cheating”, while Keir Starmer’s letter to Labour MPs in response to losing a party stronghold claimed the Greens had welcomed George Galloway’s “divisive, sectarian politics”.
Sackman, the granddaughter of immigrants from Spain and eastern Europe, has a different perspective. “Look at a constituency like mine, where you have probably about a hundred languages spoken, you have a place where diversity is our strength,” she says. “Whilst no one says it’s perfect, it’s a testament to the success of London as a city… of people whose neighbours look and pray and eat differently to them, get along with one another, where there’s dynamism and enterprise and civic spirit. This is what the rest of the UK should aspire to.”
“This is the sort of place that probably lives rent-free in Nigel Farage’s head,” she adds, seeming genuinely excited at the thought of leading the Reform UK leader around the Kosher delis, Turkish kebab shops, Japanese noodle bars, Pakistani takeaways and Persian supermarkets of this small corner of North London. “He would hate a place like this.”
Sackman’s default positivity may be about to take a hit. Even if the Ministry of Justice resists the mounting calls for a U-turn on changes to jury trials, opposition to the plans unites progressives, old-school traditionalists and right-wing populists keen to find any excuse to accuse the government of an assault on democracy. She’ll have to face down not just Karl Turner and Robert Jenrick, but the House of Lords, not to mention many of her former colleagues in the legal profession.
But government, she reminds me, isn’t about doing what’s immediately popular: it’s about sticking to the plan, as her bootcamp instructor would say, and having the confidence that you can convince people and bring them along with you, even if what you’re suggesting seems controversial.
“When you go out and prosecute the argument, and win the argument, that’s what enables change to be delivered. That’s the government at its best,” says the former barrister. “And we need more of that.”
[Further reading: Exclusive: Labour needs “progressive defectors” back to win general election]
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