Increase in judicial retirement age could help diversity, MPs told | News

Raising the statutory retirement age to 75 could improve diversity on the bench and encourage more women and ethnic minority lawyers to run for judges, said a former Lord Chancellor.

Sir Robert Buckland MP told the House of Commons that raising the mandatory retirement age by five years “would represent a huge opportunity not only for women but also for those entering the legal profession a little later in their careers.”

Speech at the second reading of the Law on Pensions and Public Service Judicial Authorities On Wednesday, Buckland said the current retirement age means the judiciary is losing “many talented men and women at the peak of their careers.”

Buckland said he disagrees with the proposal that raising the retirement age would negatively impact diversity, saying that “worst case scenario is failure to act”. The increase “could spur the government and the Judicial Appointments Commission to do even more to encourage women, ethnic minorities and late-career starters to pursue legal careers,” he said the MPs.

“It is up to the Department of Justice, the Judicial Appointments Commission, and others who are and are passionate about diversity to do more to attract people of diversity to justice,” added Buckland.

Sir Bob Neill, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there are “a number of distinguished former members of the High Court and Supreme Court who have retired at 70 and have and still do many years of service.” who frequently act as arbitrators in key areas of trade disputes and mediation.

“We need to make the judiciary more diverse and representative, but the way to do that is not to keep the retirement age so low that able people are unnecessarily lost to the judiciary,” added Neill.

Liberal Democrat MP Christine Jardine, however, expressed concern that the change “could have a negative impact on the diversity of the judiciary currently dominated by older, white men,” as did Labor Matt Rodda, who sought support from the government further details on how to ensure that the increase “does not make it difficult to increase diversity in our legal system”.

Simon Clarke, the chief secretary of the Treasury, said the government’s modeling was that raising the retirement age would “keep about 400 judges and 2,000 magistrates a year.”