Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I could not agree more; of course we are not talking about women but about, above all in this context, black and ethnic minority judges, as I made clear when moving the amendment. As the noble Baroness made clear, we are also talking about other forms of minority, including people with disabilities, for example. However, the whole thrust of this part of the Bill is intended, as one can see from the history, to get more women, as well as ethnic minority judges, into the High Court.

I will not say any more about those who have supported the amendment, except to emphasise the extremely effective point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Carswell, made regarding the collegiality of the Supreme Court. I certainly had a sense of that when I was in the Supreme Court, and I also felt it throughout my time in the Court of Appeal, although one obviously does not have that sense as a High Court judge. We were all members of one court. I do not think anyone can tell what the effect of the appointment of part-time judges will be on that essential concept of collegiality in both those courts.

I should mention the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. He was unable to imagine a woman who would be willing to accept part-time appointment to the House of Lords but not full-time appointment. The question comes back to this: if that is the case, the purpose of this part of the Bill is not to cure the problem of diversity. Instead, the purpose is to send out what the noble and learned Lord called a signal; a gesture. I am opposed to gesture legislation, which is what this amounts to. It will not make any difference in practice. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

[Earl Attlee]

If the noble and learned Lord wants to speak to another amendment in this group, I would advise him not to withdraw his amendment. Otherwise the Lord Speaker will inevitably have to go on to further amendments in accordance with the Marshalled List.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

I am very grateful to the noble Earl. I will defer begging leave to withdraw the amendment until I have moved the other amendment.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord can speak to his other amendment if he wants. He cannot move it, but he can speak to it now.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, the second amendment in my name and the names of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Carswell and Lord Woolf, is concerned only with diversity. It affects the judiciary at all levels. The amendment would leave out line 27 of Clause 18 and Part 2 of Schedule 12.

The Government accept that judicial appointments must be solely on merit. However, the Government argue that there might be cases where two candidates were of exactly equal merit, like two candidates getting the same marks in an examination, in which case the woman or the black man should be preferred. At least, that is the idea. “Solely on merit” is thus to be given a special meaning.

How is it going to work? Let us suppose there is a vacancy in the Supreme Court. The candidates will almost certainly come from the Court of Appeal. Let us suppose that there are two candidates from the Court of Appeal. Their abilities will be well known to the selection commission. The Bill provides that the selection commission shall consist of an odd number of members, not less than five. Is it conceivable, I ask, that all five members would find the two potential candidates of exactly equal merit? The answer is no. I suppose it is just possible that two members of the selection commission might favour one candidate, and two might favour the other, and the fifth member of the commission might be unable to make up his mind one way or the other, but this seems so unlikely in practice that it should not be the subject of legislation.

I am not alone in taking the view that I do. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—who is still in her place, I hope—the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, and the Lord Chief Justice, all doubted whether candidates for the Supreme Court would ever be exactly equal. So did Christopher Stevens, the chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission.

The idea that the Equality Act might be used where there are two candidates of exactly equal merit comes from a recommendation of the advisory panel in its 2010 report. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, will recall, it was recommendation 21. In a progress report of May 2011, the Judicial Appointments Commission said that it had always been able to distinguish between the relevant merits of different candidates, and that it did not anticipate that the Equality Act would ever be relevant in practice. Therefore I suggest that the idea should have been dropped then and there; it was nothing but an idea.

The members of the Judicial Appointments Commission operate in the real world. Part 2 of Schedule 12, which is based on the idea that one can have exactly equal candidates for these posts, is a good example of the sort of make-believe world in which Governments so often seem to exist.

That leaves only one argument. It is said that even though Part 2 of Schedule 12 would be useless in practice, it would send out a strong signal that diversity is of importance. This was the view of the Constitution Committee, stated in paragraph 101. It was also touched on by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, at Second Reading.

I do not believe that legislation should be used for the purpose of sending out signals. Moreover, in this context the signal is surely rather demeaning. We would be saying to highly intelligent women lawyers, “You may not have been the best but be of good cheer, you were first equal”. If I were the first black judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court, I would want to know whether or not I had been the best candidate, as I would under the existing law. Under the new law, I would not know. If I was only equal first, surely I would want to know who the other candidate was—and no doubt the other candidate would want to know who I was. Moreover, if I were a black judge, what would happen if the other candidate were a woman? How would the equality principle apply in those circumstances? I have formed the view that the Equality Act is of no assistance in this context. Of course it is of great importance in many other fields, but in appointments to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal it is of no assistance at all: indeed, it could do nothing but harm in the manner that I suggested. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord made a slight mistake. He did not beg to move; we can just carry on debating the amendments in this group.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I will comment briefly on this point. In his closing remarks the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, asked an interesting question that is posed frequently: where there is a tie-break, as I would refer to it, what should be done if there are two candidates of supposedly equal merit, one of whom is a woman and the other, for example, is from an ethic minority? I note that the report of the Constitution Committee gives a lot of assistance in how we should define merit but makes the point that, certainly in large-scale selection processes, there could conceivably be candidates who end up in a tie-break: in other words, who are assessed to be of equal merit.

It would be quite straightforward to apply the test in those circumstances. You would look to see which group is more underrepresented than the other group and, in the case where there are two from underrepresented groups, appoint the one that was not to be found there. That would be fairly straightforward. With more senior appointments, it is entirely conceivable that it would be much clearer. We have heard that there is one female and no ethnic minority member of the current Supreme Court. In that case, it would be fairly straightforward, if the candidates were tied and came out equally in an assessment, you would go for the ethnic minority candidate. Although you would want to increase the gender diversity, on such an occasion, you would need to increase the diversity overall.

I also make the point to the noble and learned Lord that blatantly nobody is seeking to have the senior judiciary reflect the people they serve, because the people they serve on the whole are there, particularly in criminal cases, because they have done wrong. Nobody is suggesting that. However, the Constitution Committee’s report makes clear, as do a lot of other reports, that in senior positions in life it is terribly important for an inclusive society to have people who are representative of different strands of society as a whole. I rest my case there.