Procedure for Appointing Judges

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the procedure for appointing judges.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I look forward to a positive and perhaps consensual debate on the procedure for appointing judges and the importance of those procedures being consistent with the independence of the judiciary, the separation of powers and the rule of law.

I sought this debate because I was concerned about certain headlines that appeared in the press in the days following the Supreme Court judgment in the Cherry and Miller cases. I pay tribute to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) for her work on the Cherry case, as well as the legal team, which did such great work. I was pleased to be one of the MPs party to that case. The headlines I was concerned about came in response to a decision that the Government did not particularly like. They were perfectly entitled not to like the decision, but they were not entitled to consider changing the system for appointing the Supreme Court judges.

For example, a headline in the Daily Mail read:

“Geoffrey Cox suggests UK could move to US-style political vetting of judge appointments in the wake of the Supreme Court’s prorogation ruling”.

The Daily Telegraph ran the headline:

“Supreme Court justices could be appointed by MPs in wake of Brexit ruling, Geoffrey Cox says”.

In a slightly more understated fashion, The Law Society Gazette headed its report with certain exchanges in the Commons Chamber with the headline:

“Supreme Court appointments may need MPs’ approval—attorney general”.

In fairness to the Attorney General, it took a degree of journalistic licence to get from what he said in the Chamber to what was reported. Those headlines arose from exchanges in the Chamber during an urgent question tabled by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the independence of our judiciary and the way in which we appoint them is admired right across the world, and that that fits in with our role in the Council of Europe, which is there to uphold the rule of law?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman wholeheartedly. I will return to that point later. The exchanges that sparked those headlines came when the Attorney General was asked by one of his Back Benchers whether it was time for MPs to get involved in approving appointments at the Supreme Court level. The Attorney General responded:

“I do think that we are going to have to look again at our constitutional arrangements…there may very well need to be parliamentary scrutiny of judicial appointments in some manner.”—[Official Report, 25 September 2019; Vol. 664, c. 666.]

As I said, I think the subsequent headlines required considerable journalistic licence. It would be useful if the same headline writers would publish the subsequent remarks that the Attorney General made during Attorney General’s questions last week, when he said that

“certainly US-style hearings—would be a regrettable step for us in our constitutional arrangements.”—[Official Report, 3 October 2019; Vol. 664, c. 1360.]

Similarly, I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s words this morning at Justice questions in defence of judicial independence and against any notion of political appointments.

With impeccable timing, as soon as I received notification that I had secured this debate, I received a written answer from the Minister—I welcome him to his place—confirming that there were no plans to change the judicial appointments processes. The answer continued:

“Our judges are selected following a rigorous, independent, merit based process which is key to maintaining the quality, integrity and independence of our world class judiciary.”

That answer echoed the point made by the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell).

In the light of all those assurances, I wondered whether it was worth proceeding with this debate, but I think it is. I am grateful to hon. Members for staying to take part. It is still relevant to proceed because, despite the words of the Minister, the Attorney General and the Lord Chancellor, one fairly significant member of the Government does not seem to be singing from quite the same hymn sheet—perhaps not for the first time. Between the Attorney General’s original comments and his clarification, when the Prime Minister was asked about the consequences of the Supreme Court judgment by The Sunday Telegraph, he said:

“It will take a while to be worked through. But I think, if judges are to pronounce on political questions in this way, then there is at least an argument that there should be some form of accountability.

The lessons of America are relevant.”

Whether the Prime Minister was thinking about putting the UK on the path to a US-style system, under which Supreme Court judges are overtly political appointees, as The Sunday Telegraph interpreted it, only he knows—I very much hope not.

The pot was stirred even more firmly by a former Conservative leader who told The Times at the end of last week that

“more and more people are beginning to ask, with some legitimacy, whether it might be time to hold hearings as they do in America to find out what their political views are and what we can expect. We need to know more about these people.”

I could not disagree more strongly with that statement. A better response to the Prime Minister’s comments came from a former Cabinet colleague of his in an article for The Sunday Times this weekend:

“If he means we should learn from the weaknesses of the US system, he is absolutely right. If he means we should copy that system, he is wrong. It involves far too much political interference in the appointment of judges and also too much judicial law-making.”

My ambition in this debate is, therefore, quite modest: to achieve as broad a consensus as possible, saying clearly and loudly that we believe in the rule of law, the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary; that our appointments processes must always respect that; and, specifically, that we reject the politicisation of the judiciary, in particular through US-style appointments processes. The Prime Minister and some of the less sensible members of the Conservative party should stop stirring that pot.

I am not saying that the appointments processes in the UK are absolutely perfect, whether through the Judicial Appointments Commission of England and Wales, through its Northern Ireland equivalent, through the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland or through the appointments commissions that are convened for the purposes of selecting Supreme Court justices. No system is perfect, and they have all been criticised. It is absolutely right that we should keep those systems under review and scrutinise them to ensure that they deliver the appointment of the best judges.

Other hon. Members may want to make suggestions about how we can improve each of those systems, including to better protect judicial independence or to improve the scrutiny and accountability of judges through ombudsman and complaints processes. I have no doubt that more can be done to improve diversity on the bench, for example.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate, and I join him in congratulating the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) on the stunning cases that she brought over the past two weeks. Regarding diversity, the old system required the Lord Chancellor to make all the appointments of the judiciary on the advice of civil servants. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the new system, with the Judicial Appointments Commission, has gone far enough in reflecting the diversity of the community at large? Obviously, gender diversity has increased, because we have a woman President of the Supreme Court, but what about ethnic minority diversity?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I do not have a ready answer to that. The numbers show that it may not have gone far enough. I agree that there is more to be done to ensure that we have a bench that reflects the society that it serves, but I am not sure what the means and mechanisms for that should be.

My key point is that we should never consider or undertake the politicisation of the appointments processes, because the arguments that have been put forward in support of political interference in the appointments process are flimsy and, I would say, misguided. There is an assertion that because judges have suddenly got involved in matters that are deemed to be political, their political judgment should be open to scrutiny by parliamentarians before they are allowed to sit, but to take that view is to misunderstand the role of judges completely. Although what they decide has important political consequences, the decisions they make are not political, but legal. Therefore, a candidate’s legal abilities alone need to be assessed and compared to those of their peers.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, and I agree with much of what he has said. I support the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. Many judges—particularly those with academic backgrounds—may, although they were appointed through an independent process, have expressed views in the past that could be considered political; in some cases, those may be historical political views. That may lead some people to be concerned about the politicising of the judiciary and the potential for judges’ views to influence their decisions. How would the hon. Gentleman address the perceived concerns of political bias on the part of some judges because of views they have expressed in the past as academic lecturers or in other forums?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I welcome that intervention, and the hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question. There are a couple of things I would say. First, we will never have a judicial bench that does not have political opinions. Just because we do not necessarily know what those opinions are does not mean that members of the judiciary are not normal human beings who have political views. Secondly, all we can do is to ensure that candidates are assessed, like all others, by an independent judicial appointments board to ensure that appointments are made on the basis of their ability to do the job as independent judges. It may be that certain individuals have expressed views such that that is called into question, but we have independent panels in place that are designed to filter out any suggestion that candidates are making decisions for political reasons, rather than simply on the merits of a particular case.

As Sir David Edward, a former judge in both the European Court of Justice and the Court of Session, put it in a recent Scottish Legal News article:

“Many judicial decisions have political consequences but it is a quite different thing to say judges have made decisions for political reasons.”

He argued that if there is a lesson to be learned from America, it is the

“malign effect of a system dependent on political or doctrinaire allegiance”.

There is nothing new about judges making decisions that have political implications or cause political controversy—although given some of the recent commentary, people might think otherwise.

It is worth noting that one of the key reasons why judges’ decisions frequently have significant political implications is precisely because this Parliament has required that of them. The Human Rights Act 1998, for example, requires judges to look at whether Acts of Parliament are compatible with the European convention on human rights. Acts of the Scottish Parliament can be literally struck down, not just under the Human Rights Act, but if the Scottish Parliament is found to have strayed beyond its competence under the Scotland Act 1998. The acts of Ministers here and in devolved Administrations are subject to judicial scrutiny. European Union law has also been a ground for challenges. That links with the growth in the use of secondary legislation—legislation that in my view is often not scrutinised particularly well here—which at least has the fallback and safeguard of judicial review.

Increasingly, judges have been asked by this Parliament to take decisions that have political ramifications, but they make those decisions on legal grounds alone, and we should not forget that. Ultimately, the key point is that the different branches of government should provide checks and balances against each other. The judiciary provides a key check against Executive overreach. To my mind, the cases of Cherry and Miller are brilliant examples of that, though perfectly reasonable people can disagree. The point is this: what sort of check does the judiciary provide if it is stuffed with Government or political appointees? It is either a check that is ineffectual in reality, or one that is perceived to be ineffectual, and both matter for the rule of law.

I will finish with a quote from the vice-president of the Law Society, Stephanie Boyce. In responding to the recent controversies, she told The Law Society Gazette:

“An independent judiciary is fundamental to our democracy. The notion of vetting judges for their political opinions is at odds with the whole construction of British justice.”

I very much hope that is something we can all agree on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

This has been a worthwhile debate with cross-party strong and unequivocal support for the principle of judicial independence, and the idea that that must be at the centre of our judicial appointment processes. We have heard interesting points about diversity on the bench and retirement ages, and received a sympathetic response from the Minister. We will obviously scrutinise and debate these issues further in future. I therefore thank hon. Members for their excellent contributions, and the Minister for his response.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the procedure for appointing judges.