Examination of Witnesses (Questions 105-119)
CLARE PELHAM,
PROFESSOR DAME
HAZEL GENN
DBE AND SARA
NATHAN
20 JUNE 2007
Keith Vaz: Good afternoon, everyone.
I declare this session open and first of all begin by asking all
of us to observe a moment's silence for our late colleague, Piara
Khabra, a Member of this Committee, who died last night. [Pause]
Could I now ask for a declaration of interest from any Members
of the Committee?
Jeremy Wright: I am a barrister, but
non-practising at the moment.
Q105 Keith Vaz: My wife holds a part-time
judicial appointment. Welcome, Dame Hazel, Clare Pelham and Sara
Nathan, and thank you for coming back. We are a little disappointed
that the Chair of the Commission is not here, but I understand
that she was not able to make the dates that we had in mind.
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: No,
she is out of the country, and could I pass on her regrets for
not being able to be present today? She is very sorry that she
cannot be here to give evidence to you. Could I introduce the
people who are here from the Judicial Appointments Commission?
On my right is Clare Pelham. She is our Chief Executive, whom
I believe you have met before. She is here to answer questions
about staffing, resources and the management of the JAC. On my
left is Sara Nathan, who I think also has appeared before you
before. She was a panel member for the 2006 High Court selection
exercise and she has also been very heavily involved in our outreach
work, so she will be able to help you on those issues. I am Hazel
Genn. I am a lay Commissioner and I have not appeared before this
Committee. I am very pleased to be here today and happy to deal
with questions on diversity. I am also quite heavily involved
in our quality assurance work, so I will try to do my best on
those subjects.
Q106 Keith Vaz: Thank you very much,
Dame Hazel. We are concerned about process and the way in which
the Commission has been established, so perhaps you could tell
the Committee how many competitions you have run so far to find
new judges and how many recommendations you have made to the Lord
Chancellor?
Clare Pelham: Would it be helpful
if I answered on that question? In the last financial year, that
is the first year of the Commission, 38 exercises were run by
the Commission. It may also be helpful if I explain, as I think
we have touched on previously, that the staff of the Commission
were running in the first year four different types of exercises
because of the transitional arrangements. There were those which
were started by the DCA and retained by the Lord Chancellor, which
staff at the JAC worked with him to conclude. There were those
which were started under the DCA and completed by the JAC, run
by DCA processes with some adjustments to take account of the
Constitutional Reform Act. I am sorry, this is a complicated story.
There were those which were initiated by the JAC before it had
devised its own processes and so they were run under DCA processes.
Q107 Keith Vaz: Sure, but you must
know how many recommendations you have made, how many judges you
have appointed since the Lord Chancellor established you?
Clare Pelham: I am afraid I do
not have that figure with me today, but I can fax it to you.
Q108 Keith Vaz: You do not know how
many judges you have appointed?
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: Approximately
2,000. We had 2,000 applicants, did we not?
Sara Nathan: Yes, applications.
Q109 Keith Vaz: But do you know how
many judges you have appointed?
Clare Pelham: I do not have that
figure with me today. There is always a question about at what
point the appointments are announced and when the recommendations
are accepted.
Q110 Keith Vaz: How many recommendations
have you made?
Clare Pelham: I do not have that
figure with me today.
Mr Tyrie: Roughly?
Q111 Keith Vaz: What worries me—and
this is the reason why the Committee has asked you to come back—is
that we were not particularly impressed with the information you
gave on the last occasion, but we took it that you were a newly
appointed organisation. You now have been in existence for a while
and the Chief Executive does not know how many judges have been
appointed by the Commission, is that right?
Clare Pelham: I do not have it
with me and I will provide it to you.
Sara Nathan: I would have thought
that would be the sort of question you might want to ask in writing.
You would not want us, surely, to tot up and do all the possible
permutations we might do?
Q112 Keith Vaz: Ms Nathan, this is
a Select Committee of the House, and therefore one would expect
witnesses to be prepared to answer questions. If I may ask the
question, and have information from the Commission as to how many
judges you have appointed. It is a pretty straightforward and
simple question.
Sara Nathan: Are you including
in that judges? Do you mean tribunal members as well?
Keith Vaz: Yes, judicial appointments.
Q113 Mr Tyrie: Can I just say that
the public will find it absolutely extraordinary that a Commission
which has been created to make judicial appointments does not
have any idea roughly how many appointments it has made?
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: Could
I just say that the Commission does not make the appointments,
the Commission recommends to the Lord Chancellor and, of course,
it is actually sometimes—looking even at the previous High
Court list it is sometimes difficult to know who has been appointed
and who is on a list, so it is not quite as simple as you may
think.
Q114 Mr Tyrie: Do you know how many
recommendations you have made?
Clare Pelham: I think it would
be better if we provided that information because -
Q115 Mr Tyrie: I do think this is
a highly unsatisfactory situation, I really do. If a Chief Executive
of an organisation comes before his board, including his non-executive
directors, and he is asked a simple question such as, "What
was turnover last year?" or "What was market CAP?"
and he does not know the answer, he is not going to last as Chief
Executive for very long because they are the most basic numbers
related to the performance of that organisation. It would just
be nice and, I would have thought, bearing in mind all the discussion
we had last time about how you wanted to change the balance of
the Bench, if you had an idea of these basic numbers, which must
be central to your job?
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: Based
on the number of exercises that we have actually completed entirely
under new JAC processes, we have only actually completed four
exercises which have been run entirely under JAC processes. One
of those is the High Court exercise. The three others were relatively
small and there is one which is with the Lord Chancellor at the
moment. So that is the number of exercises which have been completed
under our own processes, not those that we have inherited.
Q116 Mr Tyrie: How many recommendations
were made under those four processes you have named?
Sara Nathan: Can I just point
you to the High Court first?
Q117 Mr Tyrie: I am just asking the
Chief Executive if she could answer a question.
Clare Pelham: The answer to that
question is 24.[1]
Q118 Mr Tyrie: Okay, so we do know some
of the numbers.
Sara Nathan: But it also depends
on how you define "appointment". Under the High Court
what we were asked to do was what we call a Section 94 list. We
came up with 21 names under the Section 94 list, but those are
not appointments. That is a list we were asked for, and then we
were asked to go on and fulfil direct judge appointments. We have
had a vacancy notice which we have not filled yet—it has
only just come—for six of that 21. So it sort of explains
why we are a little bit tentative about that. We were asked for
a list. We have provided that. We were asked for 25 and in fact
we have provided 21, and then, as the vacancies come up, we are
asked with more specific vacancy notices to fill each specific
vacancy, and that happens in the High Court and it happens in
the Circuit, for instance. So it is not quite the absolute turnover
number that you might think we should be able to give you.
Q119 Jeremy Wright: I just want to
try and take the argument on a bit, because you have been quite
clear that you cannot tell us the figures at the moment and we
know that the process is that you make a recommendation but in
the end the Lord Chancellor will make a decision whether or not
to accept that recommendation. So presumably, as Mr Tyrie says,
you will want, in order to know whether the organisation of which
you are part is doing its job well or badly, to know what rate
of return you get from the recommendations you make? Is he accepting
them all? Is he accepting none of them? How is it working? So
given that you have not made that assessment at this point, when
do you intend to make that assessment? What processes, what mechanisms
do you have which will enable you to make that sort of assessment
as to how well the process is working?
Clare Pelham: The position is
that he has accepted all the recommendations which the Commission
has put to him.
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: That
is something which we do know at this point and can say. The other
thing that we are checking as we go along is the number of applicants
who are coming in, those who are being short-listed and those
who are being recommended for appointment and, as the Chief Executive
has said, at the moment our recommendations have been accepted.
So it is not quite as amorphous as it sounds initially.
1 Note by witness: The figure of 24 refers
to 21 selections for the High Court and 3 other singleton posts
(Special Immigration Appeals Commission Chairman, Senior Circuit
Judge (Designated Family Judge), and Senior Master (Queen's Bench)).
This follows on from Professor Dame Hazel Genn's previous statement
about exercises completed under the new processes. Back
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