Immigration Appeal Tribunal

HC Deb 29 March 1999 vol 328 cc511-2W

Mr. Clappison

To ask the Minister of State, Lord Chancellor's Department what proportion of(a) the legally qualified members and (b) the lay members of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal are from an ethnic minority. [78647]

Mr. Hoon

To enable the Lord Chancellor to monitor the effectiveness of policies designed to attract more members of the ethnic community to apply for judicial appointment, candidates are requested to indicate their ethnic origin on their application. This is a recent introduction to the appointment process and candidates are not compelled to answer. Therefore, full and detailed records are not available. However, from records that are available I can indicate that the ethnic origin of the members of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal is as followsOf the 25 part-time legal members 11 are White, one is Asian, one is Other and the remaining 12 are unknown; Of the 5 full-time members 4 are White and one is Asian; and Of the 26 lay members no breakdown of ethnic origin is available.