Draft Judicial Pensions and Fee-Paid Judges' Pension Schemes (Contributions) (amendment) Regulations 2020

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 General Committees

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I can confirm that the Opposition are not seeking a Division on this particular statutory instrument. We accept the reason for it to be passed and, in fact, I attended a similar Committee last year for the relevant 2019 judicial pensions statutory instrument.

Taking on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), I want to ask the Government about when the McCloud judgment will be implemented. I heard the Minister say that it is a complicated matter and that he needs to work through this but, to be frank, this has been going on for some time now and it is important to remember what the McCloud judgment was all about.

The Fire Brigades Union and the judiciary were able to hold this particular legislation as unlawful because the tribunal found that the provisions were discriminatory, in that younger judges were more often women and members of the black and minority ethnic community, while it also had ageist effects. It is important that this matter is addressed sooner rather than later, because we have a big shortage of judges and especially High Court judges. In the latter case, a number of senior lawyers and members of the judiciary are not applying for these jobs because of the changes in the pension regulations, while other judges’ positions are also not being filled. One of the reasons holding people back from applying is that, ultimately, they do not know what their pensions will be.

I know things are complicated, but it is not that complicated to work things out so as to come to a resolution. The Court passed a judgment years ago and the Ministry needs to get its skates on and deal with this particular long-standing issue, and I urge the Ministry to direct its mind to this matter seriously in order to resolve it. In the meantime, we are not calling for a Division on the statutory instrument itself because it is clearly necessary.