Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Prashar and Lord Falconer of Thoroton

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I do not know who the noble and learned Lord is referring to. If he is referring to Mr Christopher Stephens, I have had no conversations with him. All I can do is set out my own experience in relation to this.

[Baroness Prashar]

My Lords, perhaps I may help the Committee, having been the inaugural chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission. My experience is the one that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has described. Let us take two candidates about whom we can say that, although no two people are equal, there is merit. People are assessed against the criteria that have been set out. There may be two candidates who could equally do the job. You then have to assess them against the criteria, and that is where choice and judgment comes in. It is how that choice and judgment is exercised which makes the decision. People may be of equal merit, but they may not necessarily be equal in the sense that has been described.

The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, was right to say that this became easier when vacancy notices were sent out and we had to appoint a number of judges to the circuit Bench or the district Bench. There were some candidates who were clearly grade A and presented no difficulty, and there were others who were below the line. However, there was a lot of discussion about the people who were in the middle, and they were always assessed against the criteria. I sat on a number of appointments to the senior judiciary, and there were robust debates about merit. What this proposal does is focus the mind by saying that one of the considerations that has to be taken into account is this: what else would the candidate bring to the post? The description given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is absolutely accurate.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, for explaining that our experiences are the same. One can test this simply by looking around the Chamber. If one had to make a choice between the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I think that everyone would agree that they bring totally different characteristics to a particular job. Would we be able to say that one is better than the other? No, in my view they are of equal merit. This is a serious point.

If we assume that the argument is right, the question is then: is it open to the person appointing a judge—because this does not apply just to the Supreme Court, but from the top of the judicial system to the bottom—to say, for example, “We have one woman and 25 men in this job and we have before us people of equal merit. It might be sensible to increase the group with one more woman”? Apart from the judiciary, I cannot think of any other organisation in the world that would consider that to be a bad approach. It also involves moving on from an artificial approach that people have to be graded as number one and number two. I support the approach taken in the Bill and I do not support the approach of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd.