Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have (a) applied to be volunteer magistrates (b) been accepted as magistrates and (c) become magistrates in each of the last 10 years.

Data on the number of appointments to the magistracy each year up to 31 March has been published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) since 2020. MoJ publishes this data as part of the annual Judicial Diversity Statistics (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/judicial-diversity-statistics). MoJ did not collect magistrates’ appointment data in a reliable way before 2015.

Prior to January 2022, MoJ did not collect data on the number of applications to the magistracy. On 17 January 2022, MoJ launched an online system which collects information on magistrate applications and has made the recruitment process more efficient. As of 31 October 2022, 4,321 people have applied. Data on applications since the introduction of the new process, up to 31 March 2023, will be included in the 2023 Judicial Diversity Statistics, to be published on 13 July 2023.