Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to help ensure that the judiciary is more representative of society.

We recognise the importance of achieving a more diverse judiciary that is representative of our society and have recently made progress in this area. For example, as at 1 April 2018, BAME judges made up 7% of court judges in England and Wales and 11% of tribunal judges - an increase of 1 and 2 percentage points respectively since 2014. For tribunal judges, BAME representation is higher than the general population in each age band. Despite the progress made, we acknowledge that there is still more to do.

The Ministry of Justice has jointly developed and is funding the pre-application judicial education programme (PAJE), which launched on 24 April 2019. This is a Judicial Diversity Forum initiative, which will support and encourage lawyers interested in a judicial career and target underrepresented groups including those with a BAME background, women, those with disabilities and those from a non-litigation background, to help them prepare for a judicial career.

The MoJ is continuing to work closely with the Lord Chief Justice, Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission and other members of the Judicial Diversity Forum, including the three legal professions, to increase the diversity of our world-renowned judiciary.