Sexual Behaviour Evidence and s.41 Reform: From the Law Commission to the Courts and Tribunals Bill

On 22 July 2025 the Law Commission published its colossal 598-page Final Report (FR) on its Evidence in Sexual Offences Prosecutions project, following on from its even longer 2023 Consultation Paper (CP). The FR includes the Law Commission’s final recommendations for reform to the use of sexual behaviour evidence (SBE), currently regulated by s.41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. On 3 December 2025, Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy, announced that the Government would be proceeding with a selection of the Law Commission’s recommendations, including reform to s.41. Almost three months later, on 25 February 2026, the Government’s proposals were published in the Courts and Tribunals Bill; at the time of writing, the Bill has passed its Second Reading. Though most attention on this Bill has been rightly directed to the jury/judge reforms, the Bill contains several important changes to the law of evidence, of which, for our purposes, cl.8 is the most significant. This article tracks the Law Commission’s proposals from the CP to the FR and will contrast and critique both the Law Commission’s proposed rule in the FR and cl.8 of the Courts and Tribunals Bill. It will be argued that the Government is correct to reject the FR’s “two-step” admissibility procedure, and that cl.8 would be a significant improvement over s.41.