What progress is being made in the appointment of women to senior posts in the judiciary.

The proportion of women sitting as judges in courts in England and Wales has risen from 10 per cent. in April 1998 to nearly 17 per cent. last month. This month, there has been a net increase of one in both the Court of Appeal and the High Court, but there is obviously much more to do.

I thank my hon. Friend for her response. There is clearly steady progress and, as she has said, quality and diversity are the key to a judiciary we can all trust. Is she aware of the work that the professions are undertaking to ensure that women, in particular, are able to manage the difficult balancing act between family and advancing their career? The London Common Law and Commercial Bar Association, for example, is engineering a mentoring scheme by women, for women, to encourage them into the profession and to make sure that they stay there if they decide to have a family. Is she prepared to continue encouraging such schemes and to expand them for other professionals such as solicitors?

I am very much aware of the scheme introduced by the London Common Law and Commercial Bar Association. We welcome it and encourage further mentoring programmes of that kind. Just last week I visited an award scheme run by the Law Society to help young people, particularly those with quite severe disabilities, who want to make law a career. I want to encourage others to do that.

The Minister mentioned merit and diversity. Will she assure the House that where merit can be measured objectively, the best person will always win?

As I said in answer to a previous question, I do not think merit and diversity are mutually exclusive. We ought to appoint people on merit, we should appoint more people from a wide variety of backgrounds—more women and more people from ethnic and other minorities—and we should ensure that we have a judiciary and a legal system that properly reflect the society in which we live.