Lay justices' allowances
Courts Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Mr Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston, Labour)
I am grateful to the Minister and I will take his thanks back home to Mrs. Miller, who is a magistrate of some 20 years standing.
The breadth of the magistracy in the area in which I live concerns me because it is supposed to represent the whole of the community. Over recent years, it has become more difficult to recruit suitable candidates, particularly people from manual occupations, because of the problems of release from work. Some of the bigger employers in the north-west used to wear as a badge of pride their habitual release of people from work to carry out such functions. Recruitment has become more difficult as employment units have become smaller. In small and medium companies, someone with a particular occupation might be the only person doing a certain job.
I recognise that there is no easy solution to that problem. Part of the solution is ensuring that lost-earnings compensation is kept up to a sensible level. Over the years, lost-earnings compensation has tended to be a miserly sum not in keeping with modern well-paid jobs. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister carefully to examine how we can maintain the balance of the bench while addressing some of the difficult problems concerning release to undertake duties such as those of the magistracy. I appreciate that the issue of release is covered in employment legislation, which is another Department's responsibility, but it may be sensible for the Minister to acquaint himself with that legislation to try to find a working balance, so that the problem, which is probably more acute in some parts of the country than others, is dealt with.