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24 Feb 2010 : Column WS119
24 Feb 2010 : Column WS119
Wednesday 24 February 2010
Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity
Statement
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach): My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Jack Straw) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
In April 2009, I established an independent Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity. I asked the panel to identify the barriers to progress on judicial diversity and to make recommendations on how to make speedier and sustained progress to a more diverse judiciary. I invited Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE to chair the panel and Lord Justice Goldring, Professor Dame Hazel Genn, Andrew Holroyd CBE, Winston Hunter QC and Dr Nicola Brewer CMG to serve as members of the panel.
The advisory panel was originally to have presented its final report to me by November 2009. However, at the panel's request, I agreed to a deferral of the publication date to enable the panel to continue engaging with a wide range of contributors and developing its findings. Overall the panel met, corresponded with or received evidence from over 180 individuals and organisations, including members of the judiciary, the JAC, members and representatives of the legal professions, and diversity and equality experts, during the course of its investigation.
The advisory panel has now completed its work and produced its final report. Copies of the Report of the Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity 2010 have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
I warmly welcome the findings of the panel's report and its recommendations. Some of these will be for individual organisations to deliver. The majority though will require co-operative working between the Government, the judiciary, the Judicial Appointments Commission and the legal professions. Accordingly I have today written to invite them to join a new Judicial Diversity Taskforce, which will be responsible for driving forward the comprehensive programme of reform identified by the panel.
I am very grateful to Baroness Neuberger and the members of her advisory panel for the work they have done in producing this report, and the thorough approach that they have taken to identifying and analysing the issues involved.
We know that improving the diversity of the judiciary is a long-term challenge. I hope that this excellent report will spur all those across the system to respond to this challenge with renewed vigour.
Armed Forces: War Pensions
Statement
The Minister for International Defence and Security (Baroness Taylor of Bolton): My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Kevan Jones) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
24 Feb 2010 : Column WS120
The new rates of war pensions and allowances proposed from April 2010 are set out in the tables below. The annual uprating of war pensions and allowances for 2010 will take place from the week beginning 12 April. To provide additional support to households during the early stages of economic recovery, the 2009 Pre-Budget Report announced that the Government will bring forward a proportion of the increases expected in April 2011 a year earlier, thereby providing a 1.5 per cent increase for those benefits normally uprated by RPI.
| War Pensions Rates | ||
| (Weekly rates unless otherwise shown) | Rates 2009 | Rates 2010 |
|
Childless widow(er)s' u-40 (Officer highest rate both wars) (£ per annum) | ||
Banks: Northern Rock plc
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