Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

6: Schedule 13, page 218, line 11, at end insert—
“Encouragement of diversity in appointments to the Supreme Court(1) Part 3 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 31, insert—
“31A Diversity
The Lord Chancellor and any selection commission convened under section 26 must, in performing their functions under sections 27 to 31, have regard to the need to encourage diversity in the range of persons available for selection for appointments.””

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I spoke on the topic of judicial diversity at some length on Report and I shall not detain the House long in this debate.

There is a consensus across this House and in Government on how important it is that the arrangements for encouraging judicial diversity should apply across the court system and particularly in the Supreme Court, and that the duty to encourage diversity should be specifically imposed at the highest level. It is for that reason that I welcome the Government’s Amendment 8. to which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I have added our names. By imposing the duty, as the amendment does, to,

“take such steps as that office-holder”—

either the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales—

“considers appropriate for the purpose of encouraging judicial diversity”,

the duty is imposed in respect of those two officeholders’ exercise of all their functions where that duty may be relevant.

Amendment 8 may make my Amendment 6 unnecessary because it applies to judicial appointments to the Supreme Court. This leads me to my Amendment 7, which would permit a tie-breaker or tipping-point procedure to apply to appointments to the Supreme Court. There is no difference in principle between the Government and the movers of this amendment—myself, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—as to the appropriateness of such a procedure. The procedure applies to other appointments lower down the system as a result of the Bill, but without the amendment it does not apply to appointments to the Supreme Court.

The Government have no difficulty in accepting the principle but my noble friend expressed the view that its application was already permitted by Section 159 of the Equality Act 2010. I took the liberty of writing in some detail to my noble friend to explain why I took a different view and, while I may not have completely convinced his officials of the rightness of my position, I now understand that the Government are inclined to resolve the issue by putting the matter beyond doubt at a later stage in the passage of this Bill. On the basis that I am right about that and that the amendment will be made, then I am grateful to the Government for their concession and will say nothing more at this stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beecham]

Perhaps the Minister would care to fortify himself before these debates in the same way that Mr Churchill did.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.