Judiciary

Question

This Government takes the issue of judicial diversity very seriously and has taken steps to improve representation, while still appointing the best people for the job.

We have introduced the equal merit provision, extended salaried part time working to make it easier to balance home and work life and introduced a statutory duty for the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice to encourage judicial diversity.

The ethnic and age profiles of District Judges (Magistrates’ Courts) and Deputy District Judges (Magistrates’ Courts) appointed in 2014 are as follows:

• Four District Judges (Magistrates’ Courts) were appointed, one of whom declared themselves to be Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic; three were in the 50-59 age range and one was in the 40-49 age range.
• No Deputy District Judges (Magistrates’ Court) were appointed.

No information is recorded about the socio-economic backgrounds of salaried and fee paid judicial office-holders.

The tables below show the 244 magistrates appointed in England and Wales in 2014 broken down by socio-economic, ethnicity and age category.

Table 1: Socio-economic category

Socio-economic category has been interpreted to mean occupational group.

Table 2: Ethniciy

Table 3: Age