§ Dr. CableTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if he will list for the period since May 1997 the cases he has investigated involving the conduct of individual Judges and the action taken as a result. [105335]
§ Jane KennedyThe principle of judicial independence, which is central to our constitutional arrangements, means that it is not open to the Lord Chancellor or his Department to consider complaints about judicial decisions. However, as Head of the Judiciary the Lord Chancellor does consider complaints about the personal conduct of individual Judges and other judicial office holders. The names of the complainant and the Judge are confidential. However, in the period between August 1998 (when new internal arrangements for handling such complaints came into force) and December 1999, the Lord Chancellor received a total of 3,903 complaints about members of the judiciary. The majority of these related to judicial decisions. Of the remainder, 367 related to personal conduct and were taken forward for investigation by seeking the complainants's consent for the complaint to be copied to the Judge. In 282 cases, consent was received and the Lord Chancellor then approached the Judge concerned for his or her response to the allegations and relayed these to the complainant. On 13 occasions, he saw fit to take further action, either by writing to the Judge or by arranging for him or her to be seen by officials. Comparable figures for the period before August 1998 are unavailable.