Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
CLARE PELHAM,
PROFESSOR DAME
HAZEL GENN
DBE AND SARA
NATHAN
20 JUNE 2007
Q140 Jessica Morden: Are there exceptional
circumstances where you can waive that requirement, and, if so,
what would the circumstances be?
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: Where
we can waive that requirement?
Sara Nathan: You do not have to,
I suppose, but it is just such a good piece of evidence. You could
become a High Court Judge at 35 with none, but it would be a brave
person who would make that appointment.
Q141 Jessica Morden: Have you had
candidates for judicial office who have complained about not being
supported by their employer or senior colleagues when they are
pursuing a part-time judicial appointment?
Sara Nathan: I have not come across
any. There were none, as we said, at the High Court level.
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: No,
it is the sort of thing which gets said to us, that there are
concerns, and I think this is something that we have to take on
and something which we have begun to take on in our outreach work.
We are concerned, not just amongst barristers but actually particularly
amongst solicitors, about the extent to which whether taking on
fee-paid work acts in a sense as a sort of black mark against
somebody. In fact, we had a meeting with Fiona Woolf of the Law
Society. She came to meet the Commission to discuss precisely
this point, because our argument is that actually it should add
to the richness of somebody's practice to have had the experience
of being in a judicial appointment. I think we were in agreement
on that. This is one of these issues that we need to work in partnership
with the Law Society to get over. We need to reach out to people
in solicitors' firms to try and help them, first of all to consider
a judicial career and to relieve their anxieties, in so far as
we can, about any impact it might have on their future, but again
I think this is something the Law Society needs to take on board
as well. It is one of the issues that we need to work together
on.
Sara Nathan: Yes, we have in fact
been working together and last week or the week before Baroness
Prashar had a meeting with a number of managing partners of the
top solicitors' firms to bring out that sort of encouragement,
because obviously if solicitors think they are going to damage
their career chances of a chance or partnership, or whatever,
within their firms by taking on a part-time judicial office, they
are unlikely to do so. Nobody has actually said it to us direct,
it is just the sort of thing you hear in the ether. So we are
taking it very seriously as part of our outreach, actually trying
to get the senior partners on side, so that it is not only true
but seen to be true that going for a part-time office is perfectly
compatible with every other form of legal employment.
Professor Dame Hazel Genn: But
in truth that is not the only problem. One of the things I have
been struck by is the extent to which, for example, senior women
within the solicitors' profession have very little understanding
of judicial appointments and really do not see a judicial career
as a possibility for them. Again, I think this is one of the challenges
for us and we try to do this in our outreach work, and we are
working with the Law Society to get that message out to people,
that they should be considering a judicial career and that we
very much welcome applications from them.
Clare Pelham: Could I just mention
one further way in which the Commission recognises the sensitivity
of people in employment applying for judicial office, and that
is under the Commission nominated referees there is a category
which says that if you are a barrister we ask for a reference
from your head of Chambers, and if you are a solicitor from your
managing partner, or if you are employed from your line manager,
but we do make it very clear on the form that if, for reasons
of confidentiality, any particular candidate does not want us
to seek a reference at that point then it is very open to them
to give another name, perhaps a peer, who can comment on their
professional standing.
Keith Vaz: We have other witnesses and
I do appreciate you all have something to say, but it would be
very helpful if one of you could answer the question, whoever
is most qualified. It is just that we do have a number of other
questions to put to you. So if I could return to Julie Morgan,
please.
Q142 Julie Morgan: You mentioned
your outreach programmes. Could you tell us what they are and
the purpose behind them?
Sara Nathan: The purpose is to
make people aware of the possibility for judicial appointment
and to encourage them to apply. We have various strands of the
outreach. Some of it is not so much outreach as bringing in. For
instance, a group of us has met a number of people from the minority
groups, from the disability action groups, and we are starting
to be able, for instance, to directly link and to post our applications
through their websites so that even people who do not look at
the JAC website—and we get a lot of our applications through
that—would have access through that.[3]
We have had a number of speaking engagements, also we are very
keen on all sorts of conferences. There was a minority lawyers'
conference only last month and we had a major representation at
that. So there is a lot of that. Then we have the outreach tours
in which members of the Commission and members of staff go around
various parts of the country, often linked to specific competitions
but not necessarily, not quite coaching people but showing people,
talking through the form, having somebody who has already attained
that office go through what their life is like and being encouraging.
We try to make that very non-London centric, so that is all over
the country. So there is quite a range. We also have an email
mail-out, if you like, Judging Your Future, our magazine,
which goes out to 3,000 people a month, and we are also redesigning
the website which gets about 9,000 hits a month in order to make
that more user-friendly and more open.
Q143 Julie Morgan: Have you had any chance
to judge how effective those different methods are?
Sara Nathan: It is terribly early,
except that, if I may add, the trend in our applications is going
up. The trend is in the right direction, so we seem to be being
successful in encouraging more applications, and of course the
next stage will be to look at whether or not we are actually hitting
our target groups. Can I just say that one of the reasons why,
as you can see, we are quite effusive is that we are highly committed
to this task. We pour a huge amount of energy into it and we are
entirely committed to all of these kinds of activities and actually
we do have quite a lot to say on that. I apologise if all of us
have been talking too much, but I think it is a reflection of
our enthusiasm and our commitment to the job.
Keith Vaz: I do not doubt that at all,
a lot of energy but, as I think we know from the beginning, not
enough facts.
Q144 Jeremy Wright: Ms Pelham, could
I ask you briefly about the staff the Commission has at the moment?
You will know that this Committee has been concerned that, in
order to demonstrate the new staff which I know you are keen to
see for this process, it will be important that there should be
new people, and of course we know from the Lord Chancellor that
a substantial proportion of the staff which you currently have
(or at least that you had in March when he wrote to us on the
subject) are transferred or seconded from the Department. You
will appreciate also that the public do not know the difference
between either someone being employed or being seconded, they
will simply see them as the same people. Can you tell us how many
or roughly what proportion of those staff who were seconded are
still with the Commission and how many have been replaced by genuinely
new people (if I can put it that way), and if there has not been
much change of staff does that concern you?
Clare Pelham: Absolutely. I think
I said last time I came that we then had a staffing complement
of around 87. We are now, as of this week, at 94. We have 17 members
of staff who are temporary contractors on short-term contracts,
which means that 77 of them are on secondment. Of those, seven
are on secondment from other government departments and 70 are
on secondment from the Ministry of Justice. That breaks down into,
I think, 37 who had previously worked for the Lord Chancellor
in this area and 33 who had not previously worked in this area
but who may perhaps have previously worked in the Tribunal Service
or the Court Service and been seconded. I mentioned last time
that the secondment policy had its genesis in the original proposal
for the Commission to be relocated in 2008, which was the original
thinking behind the Department's plan to, as it were, translate
the staff on periods of secondment varying between twelve months
and two years. I think I have said that a priority for us following
that decision on relocation, which the Lord Chancellor gave to
us in October last year, was to put in place our own terms and
conditions so that we could employ directly staff who would be,
as it were, sourced from the private sector, the public sector,
the voluntary sector by public advertisement and be employed directly
by us. The immediate challenge in April when 40% of our staff
left was to replace those and we expect to have terms and conditions
to recruit our own staff in place before the end of the year.
Those will all have to be approved by the Lord Chancellor, so
that when the next tranche of staff come to the end of their secondment,
which is about a further third, we will be advertising widely
and hoping to bring in fresh perspectives and people from fresh
backgrounds. There is perhaps just one other interesting thing
I might mention, which is that there is an exception to that,
which is that we have two senior staff who are coming to the end
of their secondment before the terms and conditions will be ready
and, as an exceptional measure, we have agreed with the Ministry
of Justice that we can advertise those posts, as we have done
in the national newspapers, to people of all backgrounds but as
an interim measure they will be employed by the Ministry of Justice
and when our terms and conditions are in place they will become
direct employees of the JAC, because we felt for those two very
senior leadership roles it was very important that we did not
hold fire until the terms and conditions were in place.
Q145 Jeremy Wright: You will appreciate
it is not just the terms and conditions that concern us, it is
whether these are genuinely new people who take a different attitude
from the attitude which has been taken up to this point.
Clare Pelham: Yes, absolutely.
Q146 Jeremy Wright: You are confident,
are you, that this fresh perspective will be achieved because
from what you have told us it sounds as though you are not making
much progress in the right direction? The letter from Lord Falconer
on 12 March to the Committee said that there were 74 staff seconded
from the Civil Service. You are now saying there are 77?
Clare Pelham: Of whom 70 are from
other government departments, yes.[4]
Q147 Jeremy Wright: But they are not
being recruited from outside Government yet?
Clare Pelham: No, and we cannot
technically employ directly until we have got these terms and
conditions in place.
Jeremy Wright: I think there will be
some other specific figures that we will ask for, perhaps in a
letter, but I will leave it there.
Keith Vaz: I think the point Mr Wright
is trying to make is that to be genuinely independent you have
to have new people. You do not want to repeat the mistakes which
were made by the Ministry of Justice. Even though they have changed
their name, they are still the same people who are coming to you.
Thank you very much for giving evidence. I have to say the Committee
is concerned about the lack of factual information, especially
at the start of this evidence session. Nobody doubts energy and
commitment, which is there in abundance, but of course this is
not a charity you are running, you are running a body which appoints
judges, and we would expect that the next time the Chief Executive
of the Judicial Appointments Commission comes before a Select
Committee of the House she will know how many recommendations
had been made to the Lord Chancellor for the appointment of judges.
We will write to you and seek this information. We will ask you
to come and give evidence to us again and hopefully on that occasion
we will have the Chairman of the Commission as well. Thank you
for coming.
3 Note by witness: JAC web links and telephone
numbers for downloading or requesting JAC application forms are
posted on external websites, the application forms themselves
are not posted on external websites. Back
4
Note by witness: As I said in answer to Q 144, the correct
number of seconded staff from other government departments (ie
departments other than MoJ) is 7. JAC had 70 staff seconded from
MoJ. Back
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