I think Robert Jenrick the shadow Justice Secretary has been reading some of my comments here and under those articles in the Telegraph which allow comments. Not that my views are original; anyone with a passing acquaintance with the English Legal ystem can see this.
Robert Jenrick has compared “activist” judges to biased football referees as he pledged to give ministers powers to hire and fire them.
The shadow justice secretary set out his plans after compiling a list of more than 30 full-time and part-time judges whom he said had previously volunteered help or provided free legal services for open-border organisations.
In a speech on the third day of the Conservatives’ annual conference, Mr Jenrick pledged to reverse reforms made by Sir Tony Blair 20 years ago, restoring the Lord Chancellor’s office to its “former glory” and giving back ministers’ powers to appoint judges.
Mr Jenrick said: “I’ve uncovered dozens of judges with links to open borders charities, who take to social media to broadcast their open borders views, who’ve spent their whole careers fighting to keep illegal migrants in this country.
“Some even continue to do so whilst astonishingly serving as judges. It’s like finding out halfway through a football match that the ref is actually a season ticket holder for the other side. The public rightly asks: ‘How independent are they? They dishonour generations of independent jurists who came before them and they undermine the people’s trust in the law themselves.”
He added that under a future Conservative government, the Lord Chancellor would once again appoint judges on the instruction “never to permit political activists of any political hue to don the wig ever again”.
I set out my own assessment of Judge selection here and elsewhere. I was always uneasy about both the calibre of Judges appointed to the Immigration Tribunals and the Civil Service Officials deployed to administer the hearings. Too many from recent immigrant heritage, ostensibly because they understood the language and culture of the applicants. To challenge that I wanted the decision of who should be allowed to join me in my country to be taken by my peers would not have done me any good. Except Jack Straw and his acolytes did for my cohort anyway.
I don’t imagine the situation has improved since 2008 and the last Labour government when I accepted early retirement before I was forcibly made redundant. But application to the Judiciary was then a refuge for many an ethnic minority solicitor, disillusioned by private practice. A Judge’s wage (and pension) may be less than a top KC but it’s more than most of us earned. It is steady. More important it carries prestige especially to the family back home in Bangladesh or the Middle East.
Judicial Appointments Group had a team dedicated to travelling the country extolling the advantages of the judiciary to a wide DEI pool of less likely candidates. So long as they thought in lockstep.
Under the changes, the body currently responsible for appointing judges, the Judicial Appointments Commission, would be abolished, with the responsibility returned to the Lord Chancellor, backed by a new judicial vetting committee.
The current Judicial Conduct Investigations Office will be reformed to give it powers to investigate “inappropriate” conduct by judges, including a new duty to remove any who engage in “political activism”.
The sentencing council will also be scrapped following controversy over its “two-tier justice” guidelines. Its powers to guide judges and courts on the lengths and types of sentences will be transferred to the Lord Chancellor.
I hope Reform are listening.
