Orders of the Day — Judges' Remuneration Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 July 1965.

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Photo of Sir Elwyn Jones Sir Elwyn Jones , West Ham South 12:00, 14 July 1965

My hon. Friend has invited me to make my speech in the way he wishes, but I am sorry to have to tell him that I propose to continue in the way I had intended. I can tell him at once that, of course, allowances are paid to judges who go on assize. Those allowances were fixed in 1954, and there has been no increment since.

If it is desired to obtain the detail of these matters, my hon. Friend can refer to HANSARD tomorrow morning where he will find the information fully set out in a Written Answer to my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis), who was good enough to put down a Question on the subject today. The details are fully set out there and there is no mystery about them. It is a provision to enable judges on assize to return the hospitality they receive, on a suitably moderate basis, and it is adequate for that purpose and for no more.

The Lord Chancellor now has reason to believe that the existing judicial salaries are insufficient to make certain of attracting the best of the Bar to the Bench. That is the position we have arrived at. Yet I am sure that no one in this House will deny the importance of maintaining the high standards of the higher judiciary.

The work of the High Court judge has not become less arduous through the years. Queen's Bench judges now are frequently out of London and away from their homes and families for as much as six months a year. A considerable number of judges perform important work in vacations by sitting at quarter sessions, no doubt to the great advantage of the administration of justice. Vacations have been cut down by the sittings that have been arranged in September to clear the gaols of those committed for trial too late to be dealt with at the previous assizes.

Whenever any great problems of importance in the State call for investigation, it is to the High Court judges that we rush as soon as possible. Indeed, the pressure for their services has placed considerable burdens upon the administration of justice. They have performed their duties on various committees and there are no fewer than 20 High Court judges at present sitting on committees dealing with a wide range of subjects from law reform to security.

Moreover, those who sit in the Court of Criminal Appeal have to get through a great deal of paper work when the day's work in court is done. As those who have experience of these matters know, a good deal of the spare time of all the judges in the evenings and at weekends is devoted to the consideration and the writing of reserved judgments.

Subsection (1) of Clause 1 has the effect of increasing the pension payable to high judicial officers on retirement. Under the Judicial Pensions Act, 1959, the pension payable during the first five years of service is a quarter of the last annual salary. This is increased by one-fortieth of the salary for each further year of service up to a maximum of one-half the last annual salary, which is earned after 15 years on the Bench.

Although subsection (1) has, naturally, attracted most attention, the remaining subsections of Clause 1 are also of some importance. These enable the remuneration of High Court judges to be increased in future, should this prove to be just and proper, by Order in Council, provided that a draft of the Order has been previously approved by affirmative Resolution of both Houses.

Since the passing of the Judicial Offices (Salaries and Pensions) Act, 1957, a similar procedure has been applied to the salaries of the lower judiciary. As I have said, in modern conditions no salaries have remained constant for very many years. They have had to be adjusted from time to time and those few people whose salaries have been fixed by Act of Parliament have necessarily been placed in an invidious position. Indeed, virtually the only other salaries in the public sector which are still fixed by Statute are those of Ministers of the Crown and Members of Parliament—and hon. Members, too, have suffered because of the existence of this requirement of change by Act of Parliament.

Bills to deal with the salaries of Members, of Ministers and of High Court judges are unpopular—of that there is no doubt—and Governments are loath to find time for them in a congested legislative programme. The result of all this is that when, ultimately, a Bill is brought forward to bring the remuneration of these high officers of State into line with developments in the community, the Measure is usually very late and when it comes it gives a false impression that a wholly disproportionate increase is being granted.

The procedure which is now proposed in the Bill—and I emphasise that it still requires parliamentary approval—is the affirmative Resolution procedure which, at least, takes less time than the passage of a Bill of the kind which we are now discussing, so that there is every likelihood that in so far as a judicial salary hereafter needs adjustment it will be adjustable more nearly in the same way as the remuneration of all other salary earners.

I can deal with the remaining Clauses briefly. Clause 2 deals with the salary and pension of the Lord Chancellor. The House will remember that the Lawrence Committee on the Remuneration of Ministers and Members of Parliament, whose recommendations so far as they related to Members of Parliament were adopted and accepted by the House, recommended that the Lord Chancellor's salary should be £17,000 a year. However, since the Government decided that for other Ministers only half the increase recommended by the Lawrence Committee should be accepted—and that decision was effected in the Ministerial Salaries and Members' Pensions Act earlier this year—it has seemed to the Government to be right that the Lord Chancellor's remuneration should also be increased by only half the amount recommended. This is the effect of Clause 2.

My noble Friend the Lord Chancellor did not want his own salary to be increased before that of his judicial brethren and the increase in his salary, therefore, will not take place until a year later than that of his ministerial colleagues, that is to say, until April, next year.

The Lord Chancellor has been described as a sort of universal joint in the machinery of government. He links the three interlocking powers in our constitution. As a Cabinet Minister, he is a member of the Executive. As Speaker of the House of Lords, he is a legislator. Finally, not only is he a judge, but he is the very head of the judiciary. The House may like to know that, despite these vast responsibilities, the salary now proposed for him, of £14,500, is only £500 higher than that which was granted to his predecessor by Parliament 133 years ago, in 1832.

Clause 2(2) increases the Lord Chancellor's pension from £5,000 a year to £6,250. In view of certain comments which have been made about this part of the Bill, perhaps I ought to make it clear that it is not open to a Lord Chancellor on retirement to return to practise at the Bar. A busy Queen's Counsel who accepts the Great Seal has no security of tenure and he knows that he cannot enjoy the salary attached to the post for more than a short and uncertain time. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That, of course, does not apply to the present Lord Chancellor. But it is clearly right that in all the circumstances the Lord Chancellor should be able to look forward to a suitable pension in view of his sacrifice of his professional position if, as in the case of the present Lord Chancellor, he goes straight from the Bar to the Woolsack.