Judicial Diversity Taskforce (Progress Report)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Friday 14th September 2012 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

The judicial diversity taskforce has today published its second report, which outlines the progress achieved over the last year in driving forward change in this area.

In 2010, the advisory panel on judicial diversity made a number of recommendations aimed at increasing the diversity of the judiciary and legal professions, in response to concerns that the judiciary did not reflect the make-up of society. The judicial diversity taskforce, comprising the Ministry of Justice, senior members of the judiciary, the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), the Bar Council, the Law Society and Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, was set up to take those recommendations forward.

Significant progress has been made by members of the taskforce, having already completed 20 of the 53 recommendations. The taskforce’s recent achievements include:

Sharing diversity data and using it to develop a baseline against which to measure progress in increasing diversity;

Opportunities for judicial office being more widely promoted to eligible members of the legal profession, and applicants being offered more robust support throughout the process;

Innovative outreach activities being held to help dispel the myths surrounding the appointments process; and

Proposals being included in the Crime and Courts Bill to introduce flexible working patterns into the senior courts, and enabling the JAC to appoint a candidate from an under-represented group when two candidates are equal on merit.

Even though we are making good progress, all members of the taskforce recognise that there is still a lot of work to be done and we must not lose this momentum. We will continue to work together to implement the remainder of the recommendations and provide strong leadership so that we start to see real change in this area.

Copies of the progress report have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

The document is also available online, at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/policy/moj/improving-judicial-diversity-judicial-diversity-taskforce-annual-report.