Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [HL]

Lord Woolf Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolf (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s action in promoting this Bill, and I hope it will be enacted without delay. In that regard, I was rather concerned to hear the submissions of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, which indicated that perhaps it will not be as straightforward a process as I would hope.

I refer to the entries on the record relating to my judicial career. Before I retired, the Government had, in my view, made two errors that were having an adverse effect, particularly on the position of members of the senior judiciary. The first was to reduce their mandatory age of retirement to 70 from 75, which it had been earlier in my judicial career. The second was to reduce the value of their pension in real terms because of the tax provisions to which the pension was subject.

A further alteration was made at about this time, which meant that very senior members of the judiciary did not have the privilege that I had, as a consequence of my appointment as a senior judge, of becoming a Member of this House. I know that all members of the judiciary who have had this advantage are very conscious of how important it was. I believe that others who had this advantage have made contributions that have been most important to the workings of this House. However, I accept that this change would be difficult to bring about in the course of this Bill, even though I would like to have seen it included.

However, the changes the Bill does make are sensible. Reducing the retirement age from 75 to 70 did not apply to me because it was not retrospective, but it has been made clear by events that have taken place since that time that we have been deprived of valuable judicial contributions by the reduction in age—without, I would say, any accruing benefit to the public interest. There must be a retirement age for judges; we cannot have a situation such as existed at the time of my earlier career, when some would say Lord Denning’s great powers as a judge were beginning to wane but there was no remedy available to cope with that situation. However, bearing in mind in particular current life expectancy, going back to 75 is a wise and sensible move. I hope it will be enacted as a consequence of this Bill with a great deal of rapidity.

With regard to the other changes affecting the judiciary that are my concern, the position as I understand it is that they have been properly taken into account, and therefore I look forward to their implementation as well. To put it shortly, I wish the Bill a speedy passage.