Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of local magistrate advisory boards were (a) women, (b) men, (c) of BAME origin and (d) aged over 65 on 1 April (i) 1989, (ii) 1994, (iii) 2000, (iv) 2005, (v) 2010 and (vi) 2014.

I have interpreted ‘Local magistrate advisory boards’ to mean Advisory Committees on Justices of the Peace, the bodies responsible for recruiting and selecting magistrates in England and Wales.

We encourage applications from people from all walks of life who have the necessary skills, and we will continue to work to ensure that our magistrates reflect the make-up of modern Britain.

Diversity data for the Advisory Committees’ members is not recorded for the requested years prior to 2005. The available data is shown below.