HC Deb 25 May 1999 vol 332 cc157-8
31. Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon)

If he will take steps to make the Judges Council publicly accountable. [84160]

The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Keith Vaz)

The Judges Council is wholly independent of Government. It is an informal judicial body that represents and supports the senior judiciary in the exercise of their constitutional functions. The independence of the judiciary must be respected.

Mr. Dismore

I join hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend on his promotion.

Does he agree with the assessment provided by the Library? The Council has no formal constitution, and as a collegiate body of judges who are themselves individually answerable to nobody, is formally answerable to no-one apart from those it represents. It meets six times a year, but its minutes are not published. Bearing in mind the council's very important public functions—for example, making decisions about the outside interests of judges—does my hon. Friend agree that it is about time that, instead of allowing it to behave like a branch of MI5, we took a leaf out of the freedom of information book and put the Judges Council on a statutory footing?

Mr. Vaz

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. I congratulate him on the fact that his remarks about judges in the Committee stage of the Access to Justice Bill have been selected as the quote of the week in the latest edition of The Lawyer magazine. The Judges Council is an independent body. It is quite right that the senior judiciary should feel that they can meet to discuss issues of concern, and it is also right that they should pass that advice to junior members of the judiciary. The Judges Council has not issued any instructions to anybody: it has merely given guidance. It is right that a body of this kind comprising senior judges should be able to do so.

I am not sure why my hon. Friend feels so strongly about judges. I hope to take some time off while in this job to introduce my hon. Friend to several judges. He will find that they are friendly people of enormous integrity—and some of them may even live in Hendon.