Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has plans to increase the retirement age for magistrates.

On 8 March, we published the government response to the Judicial Mandatory Retirement Age Consultation, which sets out our intention to legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to increase the mandatory retirement age of judicial office holders, including magistrates, to 75. The legislation will include a transitional provision to enable retired magistrates who are younger than the new MRA to apply to return to the bench subject to business need. The process by which such applications are to be made and considered will be set out in due course.