Question to the Ministry of Justice:

What recent estimate he has made of the number of magistrate vacancies.

The Government announced on 8 March its intention to bring forward legislation to change the mandatory retirement age for all judicial office holders, including magistrates, to 75 – a step which I know has been welcomed by many magistrates

We will also be legislating to allow retired magistrates to apply to return to the bench where there is a business need.

On 1 April 2020, there were 13,177 magistrates. We are currently updating our modelling to assess the impact of a change to the retirement age on our recruitment requirements in each region for 2021/22 and beyond.