Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Pannick and Lord Howard of Lympne

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

My Lords, I am in the position which is often that of dissenting judges in the Court of Appeal who say that they have the misfortune to disagree with their judicial colleagues. Eminent though the previous speakers are, I cannot support these amendments. Your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member, reported on judicial appointments in March this year. We set out the scale of the problem. The problem is that about 16% of High Court judges and only 11% of Court of Appeal judges are women. Only one member of the Supreme Court’s 12 justices is female. We found that one of the reasons why there are so few women on the Bench at High Court level and above is the inflexibility of the working arrangements. We observed that there are increasing proportions of women at senior levels in all other professions and that this has occurred in recent years, in part, because of the increasing use of flexible working hours. We concluded that, for the number of women within the judiciary at the highest levels to increase significantly, there needs to be a firm commitment to flexible working and a recognition that many women will want to work part time for family care reasons.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, was concerned to emphasise in his remarks at the beginning of this debate that he is in favour, of course, of flexible working: it is part-time working to which he objects. However, I say to the noble and learned Lord that a part-time worker is simply one who needs to work flexibly on a regular basis because of continuing family care commitments that arise every week of the year.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

Can the noble Lord tell the House to what extent the commendable progress, to which he referred, that has taken place in other professions has been a result of a statutory provision requiring part-time appointment?

[Lord Pannick]

I am not suggesting that it has. The problem, as the noble Lord will recognise, is that the judiciary is way behind other professions in securing that women are represented in high proportions at the senior level. Of course, there is the utmost commitment of those in senior positions to do all they can. This is a fiendishly difficult problem but part-time working has been recognised as one of the central means by which women are able to combine family care commitments with progressing in a profession.