Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of increasing the retirement age for magistrates to 75 years of age.

In our response to the Justice Select Committee’s report on the Role of the Magistracy on 30 October 2019, we stated that we were positively considering the implications of raising the mandatory retirement age for judges and magistrates and would consult publicly on this in due course. Any change to the mandatory retirement age will require primary legislation.