§ Lord Lester of Herne Hillasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have regard to the party political affiliation of applicants for the lay magistracy; and, if so, whether they will publish details of the numbers of lay magistrates affiliated to, or members of, political parties in England and Wales. [HL1245]
§ The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg)The instructions to my Advisory Committees as regards political affiliation are clear. They are set out in paragraph 8.8 of my Directions to Advisory Committees on Justices of the Peace, a copy of which is in the Library. They make plain that
The political views of a candidate are neither a qualification nor a disqualification for appointment. However, the Lord Chancellor requires, in the interests of balance, that the voting pattern for the area as evidenced by the last two general elections, should be broadly reflected in the composition of the bench.The pre-eminent requirement for appointment to the magistracy is that a candidate must be personally suitable, possessing the six key qualities required in a magistrate (good character; understanding and communication; social awareness; maturity and sound temperament; sound judgment; commitment and reliability).Despite the fact that political affiliation has been used by successive Lord Chancellors as a proxy for social balance I doubt its continuing relevance and with this in mind I issued a consultation paper in 1998, Political Balance in the Lay Magistracy, seeking views. Respondents favoured removing political affiliation as a balancing factor but could offer no viable alternative. I decided in 1999. reluctantly, that political balance would have to remain for the time being, but instructed my officials to continue to work on an alternative. Later this year pilots will be conducted to ascertain whether or not a combination of social and occupational groupings would be a practical alternative to political balance.
I said in my Judicial Appointments Annual Report 1999/2000 (Cm 4783) (paragraph 5.21) that I hoped it would be possible to provide a breakdown of the lay magistracy in England and Wales by each balancing criterion (gender, ethnic origin, geographical spread, occupation and political affiliation) in my next Annual Report. I still hope to do so. However, this is dependent upon successful completion of the validation of the records held on all 26,000 magistrates for which I am responsible, on a relatively new 48WA computer database. If the validation is not completed in time to include the figures in this year's report, I will announce in this year's report when the figures will be published.