Clause 3 - Judicial Appointments Commission
Justice (Northern Ireland)
9:45 am
Mr Des Browne (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Northern Ireland Office; Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
I understood the hon. Gentleman's argument up to now to be that we needed to liberalise this part of the Bill and remove restrictions to create over-representation in certain areas, in order to correct deficiencies in the representativeness or reflectiveness of the judiciary. I no longer understand his argument. I thought that he was suggesting that we could instate, in numerical terms, an over-representation of nationalist women on the commission, for example, to achieve some discriminatory appointment for judges.