Supreme Court Officers (Pensions) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 April 1954.

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Photo of Sir Harry Hylton-Foster Sir Harry Hylton-Foster , City of York 12:00, 29 April 1954

I should like to join in the chorus of welcome given to this Bill and to congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on the summit of his labours here in this matter of introducing it for Second Reading, and to thank him for putting up with in genial fashion a certain amount of persistence on my part.

I am very glad to hear that it is entirely non-party and has the support of both sides of the House. It always has had. The proposal relating to judges' clerks has the support of right hon. and hon. Members of all parties, and because we like the heritage of views expressed here, I should like at this moment to recall, on the basis of what they have said, that there are those not now with us for one reason or another who, I know, would be glad that this Bill has been at last introduced. I think that the late Sir Stafford Cripps, Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson and Mr. Conolly Gage and others, who are not with us now but who were all greatly respected Members of this House, were all supporters of proposals for pensions for judges' clerks.

It is right that it should be a non-party proposition because the State has been a bad employer in respect of judges' clerks, and we have all to bear the responsibility. It may be that there was a time when a man who was appointed a judge could accumulate from his hard earned earnings enough money to make provision for his clerk himself, and it may be there was a time when a barristers' clerk could make enough money to provide for the education of his children, set them up and provide for his own old age. But these times have gone with modern taxation, and what has happened is that the judges' clerks have been left by all of us as the only officers employed about the law courts who get neither pension nor gratuity but only an ex-gratia payment equal to 14 days' payment, whatever length of service they have rendered. The time is overdue to put an end to that.

Like every member of the legal profession here, I attach the greatest importance to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has been saying about the intention with regard to people to be appointed under the Bill to the position of judges' clerks. It would be a public disaster if people other than ex-barristers' clerks were ever appointed to that position, but—I am not making a joke about gowns—considering the stuff of which Lord Chancellors are made, I do not believe there is any risk that they would not take the same view as all learned Members in this House take about the necessity of having them.

In the barrister's clerk's job, as in most others, one cannot compete with experience. Their experience as barristers' clerks is just what makes a good judge's clerk. I do not mean that no one could learn the job, but I can conceive of no way in which the art could be learnt except by being a barrister's clerk. We know what barristers' clerks do in smoothing out the difficulties of counsel, solicitors and litigants, making the work run smoothly, as the right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) said—I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not mean making a judge in good temper, because that is one of the functions of advocates rather than of the clerk—and arranging the list and knowing those little difficulties which experience learns and which make all the difference.

I do not altogether share the difficulty in understanding what, I suspect, is the Treasury point of view, which seems to have impelled the necessity for depriving the judges of the patronage they had before. I could not imagine, even before hearing my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) speak, that one could induce anybody who had ever been a judge to part with that right of patronage except for very good reasons. I can conceive no relationship more important in its confidence and friendship than the relationship of the judge and his clerk has to be. But the fact remains that His Majesty's judges, as they were—not Her Majesty's judges—were persuaded that it was an unavoidable prerequisite to get pensions for the judges' clerks that they should give up their right of patronage, and they did.