Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. I am sorry that he is not noble and learned; he is very learned, except in this House, and it is a great pity that he has never adorned the Bench himself. He must have appeared before generations of lawyers and in supporting the Bill, as I do, particularly the extension of the mandatory retirement age, I can hope only that his experiences of the more elderly generations have not been too disobliging for him.

I spent a total of 28 years on the Bench, although I held none of the great legal offices of state. Finding here the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, an erstwhile Lord Chancellor, my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, erstwhile Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, another Master of the Rolls, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, Lord President in Scotland and a Deputy President of the Supreme Court, I wonder why I am speaking. But here I am and I support the Bill, both its provisions as to judicial pensions, which I truly believe were necessary to cure the resentments and deep unhappiness felt in the judiciary over some years, but also on the mandatory judicial retirement age—what the erstwhile senior Law Lord, Lord Bridge of Harwich, called the age of “statutory senility”.

There is nothing that I really want to say about pensions. I am not expert in that field, and certainly not in a position to advise on any of the technical amendments suggested to be necessary by the Minister. As to the mandatory retirement age, I seriously think, together with my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, that this will assist in the process of judicial recruitment, which has been a real problem over recent years. The fact is that in 1993, when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, introduced the change at one and the same time, if I remember right, he increased from 15 years to 20 years the time to be served as a judge necessary to earn one’s full pension. Overnight, it became necessary to be appointed by the age of 50 if you were to earn a full judicial pension, whereas I, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and most others here, was appointed long before 1993 and it was not retrospectively effective. I had the privilege and great pleasure, in fact, of serving until I was 75. I had done 28 years. I am not asking for nearly twice the judicial pension that I then did get but, in fact, I could have retired after 15 years and got it.

I know that there are arguments both ways on this and on judicial diversity and matters of that character. It seems to me that appointment eventually to the Bench becomes an altogether more attractive prospect if, when you are in your late 40s or perhaps early 50s, and if you are in a good way of practice and probably making quite a lot of money but know that you can continue that beyond 50 and still do your stint on the Bench—which I believe for most people is a contribution due to the public weal by practitioners who have been advantaged by the process—after the Bill proceeds, as I trust it will, then you would get a full pension by doing so, quite likely rather later than you would otherwise have had to make your decision.

Nowadays, of course, there is an ever longer expectation of life. There is a longer expectation, too, of good health in one’s later years; there is also, I believe, a parallel inclination on the part of many older people who would like to continue working rather than have imposed upon them ever longer periods of retirement and idleness. Surely it is an attraction to be allowed to continue in judicial office as of right for the additional proposed five years. Those words “as of right”, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, suggested, are of great importance here. Once appointed to the office, now until 75, I hope, by an independent Judicial Appointments Commission that secures the position, you are not thereafter—after 70—at the whim of those who have power periodically to extend day by day, or whatever it may be, your judicial life.

The Judicial Appointments Commission, chaired as it has been for the last five years by the distinguished Cross-Bencher, the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, has fierce independence and an unswerving adherence to the principle of merit above all else. We have a splendid body of independent judges. We currently retire them when most, or perhaps nearly all, of them are at the very height of their powers at 70. Many would want to serve longer and I believe we should let them.