MAGISTRATES' POLITICS (Hansard, 22 February 1967)

§ LORD BRAYE
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER)
My Lords, the Royal Commissions on Justices of the Peace of 1910 and 1948 recommended that justices should be drawn from all sections of the community and that steps should be taken to ensure, as far as possible, that there is no unfair preponderance of justices from any one Party on any bench. In order to implement these recommendations it has been necessary for every Lord Chancellor to ask the committees who advise him on the appointment of justices to inform him of the political composition of the benches in their respective areas. The committees are required to give this information to the best of their knowledge, and of course individual justices are not obliged to disclose their political views.

§ LORD BRAYE
My Lords, while thanking the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his Answer, may 704 I ask him whether this question has been asked of magistrates before?

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, Lord Chancellors have always left it to the advisory committees to ascertain the views of magistrates. It is a matter for them how they do it.

§ LORD LEATHERLAND
My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that in the county where I sit on the advisory committee we have asked this question for many years?

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, this has always been a matter of some difficulty, because Lord Chancellors have thought it right to follow the recommendations of the two Royal Commissions, who had heard many witnesses and taken a great deal of trouble. The difficulty is how the Lord Chancellor is to see that the bench does not appear to be the perquisite of any one political Party unless he knows what are the views of the justices.
The Royal Commission of 1911 said: We are of the opinion that it is not in the public interest that there should be an undue preponderance of justices drawn from one political Party. The Royal Commission of 1948 put my difficulty, I think, very clearly. They said: We think that too much attention in the appointment of justices has been paid to political opinions, but we do not think that a better practice can be secured by 'ignoring politics': in this field 'politics' means party politics and the existence and activities of political parties are facts which cannot be ignored. It may no doubt seem paradoxical to say that in order to avoid political appointments, the political affiliation of possible justices must be considered and a fair balance kept between the parties. If, because a bench has a preponderance of members of party A, it is thought necessary to add to it a number of justices who belong to party B, it must sometimes follow that appointments are not according to merit so much as to political views. Moreover the danger of political bargaining is a real one, and in some cases different parties represented on the advisory committee fill the vacancies in an agreed proportion, each accepting, with little or no inquiry, the nominees of the others. On the other hand, we are satisfied that if the Lord Chancellor and his advisory committees were to close their eyes to the politics of nominees for the bench, there would be no guarantee against the almost complete exclusion in some districts of persons of a particular political colour. Where that resulted, there would be a natural sense of grievance among members of the party affected, and a 705 corresponding loss of confidence (however little justified it might be) in the impartiality of the bench.

§ LORD GLENDEVON
My Lords, if a magistrate changes his politics, ought he to let the advisory committee know?

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
No. The matter has never been pursued to that detail.

VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS
My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that one of the difficulties from which he suffers in this matter is that there are some political Parties which believe that they are non-political?