Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many lawyers from ethnic minorities were appointed as judges in each of the years since 2015.

The most recent 2021 Judicial Diversity statistics indicate that while the proportion of Asian and mixed ethnicity individuals in the judiciary has increased since 2014, the proportion of Black judges has stayed the same. On 9 December 2021, the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) published an Ad Hoc Analysis of Candidate Progression Through Judicial Selection Tools, which reported that in legal exercises, success rates for Black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates were lower, even when other significant factors were held constant. The JAC is leading further investigation into the types of professional pools from which legally qualified candidates are drawn and how this may be playing a part in the observed disparities.

The table below reports the number of applicants who declared they came from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds that the JAC recommended for judicial appointment in each financial year from 2015/16 onwards (data is not available by calendar year) and as a percentage of the overall recommendations. The figures are for legal judicial appointments and do not include any data on non-legal judicial appointments.

The total number of recommendations the JAC makes varies each year depending on which exercises are run.

Actual appointments rather than recommendations for appointment have only been reported since 2020. There were 21 new Black, Asian and minority ethnic lawyers appointed as judges in 2019/20 and 42 in 2020/21. There can be a time lag between JAC recommending candidates and the appointment being made. These numbers do not include judges that have moved office or been promoted in year and do not include appointments of non-legal tribunal members.