UK Law Articles
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The Times
June 13 1996
MPs call for an end to secret system of selecting magistrates
BY FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT
A COMMONS committee will demand an end to the secret system of little-known but powerful committees selecting magistrates in England and Wales.
The home affairs committee, chaired by Sir Ivan Lawrence, QC, wants to overhaul the advisory committees that put forward hundreds of names to the Lord Chancellor for approval every year. In a report expected this month they will call for the introduction of modern selection and interview methods. Magistrates deal with 95 per cent of criminal prosecutions but the way they are chosen has raised concern that they are not drawn from a cross-section of the community. The Magistrates' Association, representing about 29,000 JPs, has called it a "self-perpetuating oligarchy".
The MPs will call for an end to the system in which members of the advisory committees are chosen. Most are JPs who are "invited to apply" or chosen by other magistrates. The report will say there should be professional recruitment methods with vacancies advertised widely.
It is expected to recommend more formal organisation of the committees, training of committees in interviewing and in knowledge of the courts, and drawing up guidelines for good practice. It will also recommend that membership of advisory committees, up to 80 per cent of which are magistrates, be publicised. There is no way of ensuring that the advisory committee should represent a cross-section of the community.
Concern has been expressed that local benches are unrepresentative. A survey from the Lord Chancellor's Department last year found that Conservative magistrates dominate the local bench, even in Labour strongholds.
Other recommendations are expected to include that the chairman of the advisory committee is not also chairman of the local bench; and names of the members of the committee be freely displayed in public places. It has been mandatory only since 1992 that the names of members be published but availability of the list varies.
