Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me first in the debate. I am delighted to make a contribution to the Second Reading of a Bill that was very much part of the work that I undertook as Lord Chancellor. I was keen to make sure that we made progress with the Bill on several grounds, the first of which was the necessary reform to judicial pensions in light of the McCloud judgment and other legal developments since the previous set of reforms to judicial pensions. The second was the important and generational issue of retirement age for judges. The previous reform to that retirement age had been back in 1995, and it was not of immediate application but took many years to come into effect, bearing in mind its adherence to non-retrospectivity. I took a different view about the way in which we should approach reform this time. I felt very strongly that any change to retirement age should have immediate effect, and that it should benefit those currently in judicial office. I make no apology for that, because with welcome changes and elongations to lifespan, health and wellbeing, I thought that we were losing many talented men and women at
the height of their career. I am not going to name names, but there are many people who served in the highest judicial office who left at the age of 70, but who I felt had much more to give. Some of them were able to carry on in retirement, sitting with special dispensation, but I felt that we needed to do something generational. I very much hope that the change that we are bringing about in the judicial retirement age will endure for many years, well into the middle part of this century. We are not saying that people have to sit at 75. We are not forcing people to sit beyond the time they wish to serve, but we are giving them an opportunity to do that.
Can I deal head-on with diversity, because I considered that matter very carefully indeed when I was Lord Chancellor? I have had the privilege of serving on the judicial diversity forum, which is a committee of the Judicial Appointments Commission, ably chaired by Lord Kakkar, and we take the issue of diversity very seriously indeed. In the other place, amendments were tabled to reduce the age of retirement to 72, on the basis that there were concerns about slowing the increase in diversity, but I believe that that worst-case scenario is based on a failure to act. In other words, it is incumbent on the Ministry of Justice, the Judicial Appointments Commission and others interested in and passionate about diversity to do more to attract people of diversity to the judiciary.
In particular, many women have had career breaks to bring up their family in their 30s and 40s. At the moment, they face quite a difficult decision to return to practice, and regard a 70 age limit as inhibiting their ability to take up part-time, then full-time, judicial office. Increasing the age limit to 75 will allow more women who have had career breaks actively to consider what is a career of up to 20 years if they are to enjoy the full benefits of the pension.
We should not forget that in 1995, one of my predecessors, Lord Mackay, not only reduced the pension age but increased the time that people had to serve to take their full judicial pension from 15 to 20 years. That combined decision had quite an effect on the career opportunities presented to lawyers when considering whether the bench was for them. In other words, people really had to make up their mind in their 40s if they were serious about reaching the bench. There are plenty of exceptions—some people who have done very well in their profession could go to the bench later and perhaps take a smaller pension—but many people felt that they could not take full advantage of a judicial career because of that time restriction.
That changes with a retirement age of 75. People can come to the bench in their mid-50s and serve the full 20 years. That is a huge opportunity, not just for women but for people who come to the legal profession slightly later in their career, mainly because the financial burdens are so onerous in their younger years that they do not feel able to join it in the first place. Contrary to suggestions in the other place and elsewhere, the measure could be a spur to the Government and the Judicial Appointments Commission to do even more to attract women, people from an ethnic minority, and people who join the profession late to a judicial career.