Orders of the Day — Constitutional Reform Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:32 pm on 17 January 2005.

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Photo of Chris Leslie Chris Leslie Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Constitutional Affairs) 3:32, 17 January 2005

We will have to agree to disagree on the matter. It is not true that we will have no opportunity to debate the judicial appointments commission on the Floor of the House, because as the Bill progresses through its parliamentary consideration there will, of course, be Report stage, when we will be able to look in detail at many of those matters.

I want briefly to mention the operation of the judicial appointments commission, which will select judges for appointment in England and Wales. It will be composed of 15 members: six lay members, five judges, one solicitor, one barrister, one tribunal member and one magistrate. The chair will be a layperson, emphasising independence both from the judiciary and from the Executive. The commission will recommend to the Lord Chancellor one candidate for each vacancy selected, solely on merit. No one will be appointed who has not been selected by the commission.

The Lord Chancellor will have a very restricted role: he or she will be able to reject a candidate once and to ask the commission to reconsider a selection once, as I said in answer to an intervention by Mr. Garnier. The arrangements will ensure that the role of the Lord Chancellor is transparent, but that there is necessary ministerial oversight and involvement to ensure proper accountability to Parliament, which is of course sovereign.

At present, the Lord Chancellor has statutory powers to remove judicial office holders below the High Court on grounds of incapacity or misbehaviour. Those powers will be reformed so that they can be exercised only with the agreement of the Lord Chief Justice. The Bill places all matters of judicial discipline and removal on a transparent statutory footing and provides a structure that reflects a proper balance between the independence of the judiciary and democratic accountability for the judicial system. The current role of Lord Chancellor will be shared with the Lord Chief Justice. No removal or other disciplinary action can be taken by one of them without the agreement of the other. None of those powers will displace the existing role of Parliament in the removal of the most senior members of the judiciary, in those exceptional circumstances.

The Bill will also permit those who are dissatisfied with the administration of the complaints procedure established by the judicial appointments commission to seek review of the operation of the process by a judicial appointments and conduct ombudsman.

Part 5 of the Bill takes account of the reform of the office of the Lord Chancellor in Northern Ireland, building on the provisions already made for that jurisdiction. Part 5 makes provision for the removal of judges in Northern Ireland in the period prior to devolution of justice to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In Committee, we shall no doubt debate these provisions in much greater detail, but fundamentally, the principles and rationale for the legislation are clear and simple—