JUDICIAL OFFICES (SALARIES) ORDER, 1959 (Hansard, 12 May 1959)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR)
rose to move, That the Judicial Offices (Salaries) Order, 1959, be approved. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, the object of the Order is to make the same relative increases in the salaries of the Recorders of Liverpool and Manchester, the county court judges and the Metropolitan Police magistrates as the increases in the salaries of the higher civil servants recommended by the Standing Advisory Committee on the Pay of the Higher Civil Service, the acceptance of whose recommendations was announced by my honourable and learned friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on April 24 of this year.
The salaries of the Recorders of Liverpool and Manchester, the county court 285 judges and the Metropolitan stipendiary magistrates were fixed at their present figures by Section 1 (1) of the Judicial Offices (Salaries and Pensions) Act, 1957, and were related to the increases in the salaries of higher civil servants which were made in 1956 as a result of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. The need for legislation in the case of the judicial salaries led to the increases made by the Act of 1957 being delayed for more than a year after the increases received by the Civil Service. In order to avoid the need for legislation in future, Section 1 (4) of the Act enabled any further increase in salary to be made by means of an Order made by myself, with the consent of the Treasury and subject to Affirmative Resolution. The salaries which will now be paid are set out the Order. I do not think I need trouble your Lordships with any further detail about the Order, but if any noble Lord has any questions I shall, of course, do my best to answer them. I beg to move.

§ LORD SILKIN
My Lords, I rise first of all to welcome this measure which I think is long overdue. I hope that, in spite of the formidable-looking agenda before the House this afternoon, I may be permitted to say a few general words on this subject. It may comfort the House to know that in saying these words I am also saying what I might otherwise have said on the next Order on the Paper—namely, the Metropolitan Magistrates' Courts Bill.
I feel that this question of remuneration of our judicial servants is of the greatest importance. We pride ourselves that we have the finest Judiciary in the world, and I think certainly it has been true of the last fifty years. But we can expect to get the very best judicial body only by providing for them conditions which, are satisfactory. There is no doubt at all in my mind, from information I have, that a good many of our judges, particularly county court judges, and magistrates have been living in relative penury during the last few years, certainly since the war. The increase in their remuneration has not kept pace with the rising cost of living, and even before the war their remuneration was not 286 exactly generous. Judges have a position to maintain. They have to maintain a contain amount of aloofness from the general public. For instance, I think it is highly undignified for a magistrate or a judge to have to queue up for a bus on his way to court, and possibly run the risk of being accosted by people who are to come before him later—I have known that to happen in my experience. Generally speaking, I feel that we ought to be generous to members of our judicial body. If we are not, we run the risk of not attracting the best type of barrister and of lowering the general character of our Judiciary.
My Lords, I feel that this Order goes a long way towards meeting the situation. But it is not only a question of remuneration; there is also the question of pensions. A good many retired judges and magistrates have a legitimate grievance in so far as their pensions have not kept pace with the cost of living. A pension which was a reasonable pension, say, in 1940, or even 1950, is to-day an unreasonable pension. While it is not strictly material to this Order, I would ask the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor whether he would give sympathetic consideration to the possibility of increasing the pensions of those judges and magistrates who retired some years ago and whose pensions have not been increased adequately to meet the cost of living
There are two other matters that I want to mention very briefly, though I recognise that, strictly, this is not the proper occasion. If we are to attract the best type of member of the Bar to either county court judgeships or magistracies, then there ought to be adequate opportunities of promotion to the High Court. In the last fifty years only one or two county court judges, I think—there may have been more; some may have escaped my notice—have been promoted to be High Court Judges. There must be more than that number who are suitable for such promotion, and if the feeling got around that, by accepting the position of a county court judge or a magistrate, that was the end of the road and there was no opportunity for advancement, then. I think it would be a very bad day for our Judiciary.
I would ask the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, who is to 287 a large extent responsible for the appointment of High Court Judges, and the Prime Minister, too, whether they will not seriously consider appointing far more county court judges, or even magistrates, to the High Court as and when they are found to be suitable. It cannot be that nobody suitable has been available for promotion in the last, say, twenty-five years. Not only do I regard that as unthinkable, but, if it were true, it would be a very serious reflection on the quality of our county court judges and our magistrates.
Finally (and I have informed the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor at various times that I have this matter very much in mind), there is the question of the salaries of deputy county court judges. We use a great many of them, and it saves the appointment of county court judges. If we did not make use of retired judges as deputies, we should have to appoint more judges. Now, speaking very roughly, the remuneration of a county court judge today, with the increased remuneration, would be of the order of about £30 a sitting. The remuneration of the deputy is ten guineas. That is out of all proportion to the relative value of their work. After all, the retired county court judge who is acting as a deputy is a man of very great experience and long service, and should be worth as much as the acting county court judge: certainly far more than one-third of the remuneration. I hope that something can be done in this respect, also. May I conclude first by apologising to the House for raising matters which are perhaps a little extraneous to this Order; and then by asking the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor whether these increases date from to-day, or are retrospective; or, if not, when they begin?

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, perhaps I may deal with the various points which the noble Lord has raised. The first was with regard to the scale of salaries. I am in sympathy with his general view, but I think it is right that your Lordships should be aware of the alterations that have taken place. Before the war, in 1937, county court judges were paid £2,000 a year. That was raised in 1952 to £2,800. The noble Lord will remember that the change, 288 which was started under our predecessors in Government, who had gone a certain length in making the arrangements, was taken over by the present Administration: it was an agreed measure. Then, in 1957, as the House will remember, the figure was raised, by the Act to which I referred, to £3,750; and it is now being raised, by the Order now before your Lordships, to £4,400. The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, if I may save your Lordships detailed figures, gets practically the same amount; and the salary of the metropolitan magistrates has risen in the same four stages: from £2,000 a year to £2,500; then to £3,400 in 1957, and to £3,800 to-day. So that I feel that a good step has been taken in the direction which the noble Lord desires—a direction with which, as I say, I have sympathy.
With regard to pensions, on the completion of service for the full period the judge in question is entitled to a pension of half the figures I have given; so that to-day it will be £2,200 for a county court judge, £1,900 for a Metropolitan magistrate, and £2,200 for the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate. My Lords, these pensions, of course, must be considered in relation to the value of money and the increased taxation. On the other hand, one has always to bear in mind, on the other side of that picture, the great difficulty to-day of the professional man saving enough from his earnings to provide an income for his old age. It is a very difficult task, and therefore the pensionable job has an increased value. Coming to the other point on pensions which the noble Lord raised, I am always very doubtful as to where the proprieties lie in these matters, but I think that it is perfectly proper for me to say that a Pensions Increase Bill has been announced; and I think it is again proper to ask the noble Lord to see that Bill before he says anything further on this point.
Now with regard to promotions, there again the noble Lord has raised an interesting point. Again I hope that he will forgive me for answering "off the cuff", without having verified my details, but the position is somewhat more favourable than he mentioned. There was a long gap from, I think, the time when Mr. Justice Acton was promoted from the County Court Bench; but during the time of my noble predecessor, the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, there were 289 three promotions at once that I can remember—Mr. Justice Austin Jones, Mr. Justice Finnemore, and Mr. Justice Collingwood. There was also Mr. Justice Ormerod. In my own time, Mr. Justice Ormerod, who started on the County Court Bench, then served in the Divorce Division and later in the Queen's Bench Division, has been promoted to the Court of Appeal. I may add that I think that is the first time in our history that someone who started on the County Court Bench has been promoted to the Court of Appeal. Also, Mr. Justice Wrangham was promoted from the County Court Bench a short time ago. He was a county court judge in the North, and is now a Judge of the Divorce Division. So the noble Lord will see that this is a matter which, certainly since the war, has been well in the minds of Lord Chancellors; and I assure him that it will remain in my mind.
On the noble Lord's final point—the salaries paid to deputy county court judges—I should like to tell him that this again is a matter with which I have great sympathy. I shall let him know as soon as I have anything to report, but I hope that he will accept that it is a matter on which I am working at the present time.
My Lords, thanks to the fact that your Lordships have allowed me to deal with salaries by Affirmative Resolution, instead of by Act of Parliament, the increases in the salaries will follow very closely the dates of the increases of salaries in the Civil Service; and therefore there will not on this occasion be a period of retrospection. I hope that I have dealt with all the points raised by the noble Lord, and I thank him for raising them. Once again, I should like to express my general sympathy with the views that he has expressed.