Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I find this a much more difficult issue than some noble Lords who have spoken. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, emphasised that we all agree about the importance of diversity, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, emphasised his personal commitment to diversity, which I am aware of and, of course, I recognise. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, referred to the statistics and said correctly that some progress has been made, but the position is still woefully inadequate. Some 16% of High Court judges and only 11% of Court of Appeal judges are women. These figures are simply unsatisfactory and urgent progress is desperately required.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, mentioned, the Constitution Committee, of which she is the distinguished chairman and I am a member, conducted an inquiry into judicial appointments and reported in March. We found that one of the reasons for there being so few women on the Bench at High Court level and above is the inflexibility of the working arrangements. At paragraph 112 of our report, we observed that one significant reason for the increasing proportion of women at senior levels in other professions in recent years has been due in large part to the greater use of flexible working hours. At paragraph 117, we recommended that allowing flexible working, certainly at the High Court and Court of Appeal levels, was the “minimum change necessary” to promote diversity. We said that:

“For the number of women within the judiciary to increase significantly, there needs to be a commitment to flexible working”.

We need to recognise that many women will either want or need to take career breaks, or work part time or flexibly for family care reasons.

As I understand them, the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, Lord Carswell and Lord Woolf, are essentially concerned about the practicality of part-time working, certainly at the Supreme Court level, but mention has also been made in this debate of the High Court and the Court of Appeal. In my experience, from the perspective of the Bar, I must say that the overwhelming majority of cases in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and certainly in the administrative court occupy three days or less. Of course, there is much work to be done by judges out of court—I do not for a moment suggest that judges work only between 10.30 am and 4.15 pm—but actual time in court, which has been mentioned, occupies three days or fewer. Of course, there are longer cases, sometimes six or nine months, but they are unusual, exceptional or out of the ordinary. In any event—this is why I find this a more difficult issue than some noble Lords who have spoken hitherto—we ought to bear in mind that even at the Supreme Court level, judges have taken time away. They continue to do so, as I understand it, for a month at a time to sit in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. As shown by a notorious example recently, judges at the Supreme Court level take time off, for very good public interest reasons, to sit on inquiries. We should not proceed on the basis that every judge works exclusively, full time in a particular court.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, mentioned—he is absolutely right to emphasise this point—the high reputation of our Supreme Court and, indeed, of our whole judiciary. It is a remarkable fact that as the public have lost confidence—regrettably—in many other institutions of our society, including, most regrettably, Parliament, but also the press and the City, the public rightly retain the utmost confidence in the judiciary. It is one reason why the public are quite prepared to listen carefully, as I am sure they will, to what Lord Justice Leveson will say about press freedom. However, we ought to bear firmly in mind that the confidence of the public in the higher judiciary is in danger of being undermined to the extent that the higher judiciary reflects and is composed of so high a proportion of men with such a small proportion of women.

The point was also made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that surely, when someone has reached their late 50s, or 60s, when in the normal course of events they would be eligible for appointment to the Supreme Court, they ought to be prepared to sit full-time. However, surely one can envisage circumstances in which a women aged 60—slightly younger or older—may have a child aged 15 and may find it difficult to sit on the Bench during school holidays. She may also have an elderly relative for whom she is caring. These are not unrealistic examples.

In any event, I suggest that the provisions in the Bill which concern the noble and learned Lords who have spoken are merely permissive. They would obviously not be applied in relation to a Supreme Court appointment unless and until an occasion arose when it was practical to do so. I suggest to noble Lords that, given the importance of a real commitment to flexible working, it would be most unfortunate indeed if the Bill were to contain that commitment but exclude it in principle in any circumstances at Supreme Court level.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

This is an issue close to my heart. When I was a young lawyer in the 1970s I contributed to a book called The Bar on Trial, written by a group of young lawyers seeking to address the nature of the Bar at that time. I wrote the chapter on women and I have been writing about women and law ever since. The issue of flexibility is the one that exercises women in the profession more than probably any other. It is the reason why women’s careers look different—they are the people who have children and who are the primary carers.

Increasingly, women now at the Bar, perhaps unlike those of previous generations, have a different way of wanting to deal with their role as mothers. Their children are not going off to boarding school in their primary school years, they are not away from home, they are still living with their parents and there is therefore the issue of who is the primary carer. Still, I am afraid, it usually falls to women, so I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for emphasising that this is about flexibility. I regret that the words “part-time” are used. Can we find a way of reformulating this so that it is about flexibility?

I am concerned that often the ways of doing things are still championed by those who have gone through the system and come out at the other end—and I say that respectfully to those who are now retired as judges. We have to be capable of changing to deal with a changed world and the changed aspirations not just of women in the profession, but also sometimes of men in the profession and of the general public, if we want to see our judiciary change in its appearance.

It is right that we are talking first about the High Court. Currently, judges go out on circuit. It is a problem, and I do not know how to square this circle, because I think it is important that judges go out on circuit to try, for example, big criminal cases. It still matters because there is something wrong with the idea that there is a local High Court judge to deal with these things—local circuits can become too cosy and it is sometimes better that someone from outside comes in to try big, difficult cases in which a lot of public outrage might be involved. It deals with the question of whether there is too much cosiness or familiarity when the same judges are always trying the same cases.

I want to pick up the comments of my noble friend Lord Pannick. When it comes to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, it is very rare that women still have very young children, but it must be possible for there to be flexibility when our children are adolescents, when they are taking exams or having time out of school. It must be possible to make arrangements so that judges can have time to deal with such domestic issues. It became an embarrassment even to raise those things at one time, but it is now possible and sets of chambers accommodate those men and women who want to have time for their families—that is how the working world has to be.

When it comes to the Supreme Court, of course it is right that at the moment, by and large, those who go to sit on the Supreme Court will be about 60—that is the sort of age we are looking at—but, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, sometimes a woman of 60 is the mother of adolescent children taking exams and going through important parts of their growing lives. It should be possible to find ways of accommodating that. There is something wrong with a system when, of 25 people consulted on the recent appointments to the Supreme Court, 24 were men. Is it any wonder that we only have one woman on that court? I can say emphatically that there are women who could have taken up those new appointments, but who were not considered. I hear retired judges, and even sitting judges, saying, “We only want the best”. Of course, we only want the best, but I want us to open up what those ideas of “the best” are. Sometimes they are defined by men who have no idea about the contribution that highly intelligent women of a different experience might bring to those senior courts. That is why it is not good enough to stick with the old system. We have to embrace change if we want to see a different kind of judiciary. We should see the Bench as a whole, and not replicate the same people with those cut from the same cloth. I strongly endorse the efforts to change the arrangements and so am against the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

Could I ask the noble Baroness a question? Much of what she said dealt with flexibility. I think that everybody in the House is in favour of maximum flexibility, both at the High Court level and above where it is possible. The real question is whether flexibility demands part-time judges. The view of some of us is that it does not.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

If I may respond to the noble and learned Lord, it seems to me that it has to be one of the possibilities in the whole panoply open to those making appointments. I do not imagine that it would happen very often but it might be that someone exceptional could be appointed who would say, “I will sit during these parts of the year and will be available to you then”. I do not believe that that would bring about resentment from other colleagues once they saw the quality of the work done by people of real ability.

[Baroness Neuberger]

Much of what I had wanted to say has been said by others, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Jay. I chaired the Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity and we took a great deal of evidence from both men and women who were either judges or interested in becoming judges. Of the many components needed to create a more diverse judiciary, flexible working was pretty near the top of the list. It was near the top of the list for people in their late 50s and in their 60s, who were not on the whole talking about looking after children—although, like the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I think one ends up worrying about one’s children for ever—but about caring for elderly parents.

Increasingly, because we are living longer, people in their 60s are caring for parents in their 80s and 90s. It is likely that people who are going to work as much as they possibly can in their 60s may still need to work more flexibly than was hitherto the case because they need to look after, or make sure that somebody else is looking after elderly parents. That point was made to me almost as much by men as by women and almost as much by solicitors as by people who came from the Bar. We must make provision for flexible working given the way that our population is ageing and that we are likely to look after parents in our 60s and 70s.

Therefore, the need to be more creative and flexible in how we think about these issues has never been greater. That was felt very strongly by people from whom we took evidence. Those people, including some members of the present High Court, also said that to them flexible working was not about working two days one week and three days the next, but about working possibly for nine or 10 months of the year and simply taking slightly more holiday than other people. That holiday, which would in fact be to allow them to carry out their responsibilities, would simply have to be factored into the system. Sending out a message to the wider world that we are not prepared to consider flexible working for the judiciary when we consider it for every other profession in the country would look very strange indeed.