Senior Judiciary: Women

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Faulks

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of women in the senior judiciary; and what steps they are taking to increase that number.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, the Judicial Office produces and assesses annual statistics on the diversity of the judiciary, including gender diversity. The last publication was in April 2013 and the next one is due shortly. The Government are committed to playing their part in increasing judicial diversity, which includes the number of female senior judiciary. We introduced measures in the Crime and Courts Act 2013 to increase judicial diversity, including the equal merit provision and salaried part-time working.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I thank my noble friend. Although the Government should not interfere with judicial independence, there is public interest in the judiciary’s composition, which the Government have a responsibility to monitor. Given the lack of women in the senior judiciary, will the Government encourage a fresh look at the criteria for those roles to ensure that the competitions, for some of them at least, attach weight to the distinct qualifications and experience that women candidates have and take account of the different ways of operating and career paths of these women compared with the men against whom they are being assessed?

[Lord Faulks]

This is a difficult problem and the more that I have read about it the more difficult I think it is. It was much debated during the passage of the 2013 Act. The Government are doing their best to encourage diversity but the problem probably starts much earlier, in the structure of the relative professions. The number of women applicants for High Court positions is, sadly, still relatively low. That is less the case in the lower judiciary. The position is that there is one woman in the Supreme Court, and 19 out of 108 High Court judges are women, as are seven out of 38 Lords Justices in the Court of Appeal. This is a regrettable state of affairs and, clearly, we hope that things change.