24
Examination of witness
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill.
Q1 The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the House of Lords Constitution Committee. Today, we are holding our annual evidence session with the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill. Thank you very much indeed for coming along, and a warm welcome to you. I gather that you have one or two opening remarks you would like to make which would be helpful for the rest of our discussion. We very much welcome what you have to say. We will then start the wider discussion and questions that the committee would like to put to you.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Thank you very much, Chair. I am here fresh from the London Legal Walk last night, where I managed 10 kilometres on a hot sunny London evening. I am delighted to say that we raised almost £1 million for legal advice charities. It was a good warm-up for this morning. It is indeed a great pleasure to be here in what are serious times. I hope that during the course of this session I will be able to provide some reassurance in those areas where our responsibilities are shared.
I know that very recently you heard from Lord Reed and Lord Sales. They gave evidence back in April. Watching them caused me to reflect on how different our respective worlds are and the complexity of the work we do in England and Wales right up to the Court of Appeal, but also the sheer breadth and scale of the work in England and Wales. We have around 24,000 judges and we carry heavy leadership responsibilities. The volume of work—I know we are going to talk about it later—is only increasing. We had 2 million civil claims issued in 2025 alone, 39,000 mediations in the civil jurisdiction and more than 560,000 family cases issued. So it is a very different world in the Royal Courts of Justice and around the court centres of England and Wales.
I want to welcome formally your rule of law report last November, which, if I may say so, was a superb piece of work, and your engagement generally with the judiciary across the board. Among many questions, you asked, “What is the rule of law?” We know between ourselves what it means, but we also know that we need to improve understanding of what the rule of law means, the fact that it is a facilitator rather than something imposed by judges, or indeed anyone else, and the benefits of the rule of law in a more positive context.
I also want to acknowledge formally the important work of the House of Commons Procedure Committee on the sub judice rule. That is an exercise in which I engaged with some evidence in writing. We know that the sub judice rule is a critical safeguard both for judicial independence and parliamentary privilege. We, the independent judiciary, play our part by not commenting on policy matters, developing the common law and applying it in a way that is respectful of the separation of powers. As I said in my evidence to the Procedure Committee, it is a two-way street. Parliament in turn needs to respect the work of judges and courts, and that fundamental principle of comity.
I understand all too well that respect begins with understanding, and here some of the work that we can do together comes into play. I recognise that there is still an enormous amount of work to do in improving parliamentary understanding and a wider public understanding—it is something you mention in your report—of many things, including the work of the judiciary. I increased the number of parliamentary liaison judges very recently. I am going to make it a sub-committee of the Judges’ Council to increase the focus of the work we do in this area. I am sure it is something we will discuss in a little more detail later on, but it is an important priority for me at the moment.
I want to move on very briefly to the aspect of reassurance. We, the judiciary, have a stability and constitutional permanence that I think can offer some reassurance in turbulent times. We know about political events and events in terms of safety and crime across the country, but we also have a packed legislative reform programme. We are seeing the retirement of some of our most senior and outstanding judges. Their contributions need to be recognised, but I want to emphasise that I have every faith in the depth and breadth of available judicial talent and the fact that, as many on this committee will know, we have systems of stability, permanence and endurance that can provide the reassurance I am talking about. Our foundations are solidly and carefully constructed, and in a world where everything is so fast-moving it is important to hold on to those basics—that the judiciary has that permanence. That permanence has impact both domestically and internationally. As I travel around the world on my official duties, time and time again it comes back to me that together we are stronger. In those countries that respect the rule of law where we can share dialogue, ideas and commitments to the rule of law, that can only be to the good not only of our country domestically but around the world.
Of course, that solidity and stability does not mean standing still; the law must be stable but does not stand still. In the context of the permanence and stability to which I have referred we are still moving forward with some exciting new initiatives, including the creation of a new business and property division which will bring together our outstanding business and property courts under not only one roof, as they already are, but one leadership in a more accessible form. I think that is a good example of some of the new initiatives that we are bringing in.
Standing back and drawing things together for the time being, it has been and continues to be an incredibly busy and challenging time for us all. We have an enormous amount of pressure on the Judicial College, the training college; we have new courts opening with the City of London courts; we have a magnificent new tribunal centre opening in Newgate Street. Demand is increasing in all our jurisdictions, but judges are just getting on with it. They have resilience and commitment. Whatever else is going on around them, they do the day-to-day job that is so important to all of us. There is stability, and we are forward-looking and moving confidently into the future.
Q2 The Chair: Lady Carr, thank you very much for that. You have covered the ground extremely effectively and forecast many of the questions and areas we will raise. I start with the whole question of backlogs in the courts. We read a lot about them in the press and this is an issue that obviously concerns the Government and Parliament alike. You mentioned the future in terms of new laws being made which add to the burden, but I particularly want to look at the past and current volume of backlogs in the courts. Are there specific areas within the system where pressures are particularly acute? You mentioned our report on the rule of law. In that, we mentioned the evidence-taking session we had with Sir Geoffrey Vos, who gave us answers about the use of technology. There have been recent reports in the press about courts being very willing to use tools such as AI to speed up the process of justice. If you could give us a few thoughts on delays and backlogs in the courts, that would be extremely helpful.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: There are two parts to your question. The first is about backlogs and where we are; the second is about what role AI can play in reducing those backlogs.
First, on backlogs, the obvious point to make before I go into the detail is that backlogs do not necessarily mean decreasing performance. What they mean is that performance may be doing as well as ever and, in some jurisdictions, better than ever, but the backlogs continue to increase because of rising demand.
We can look at various jurisdictions: family, civil and then crime and tribunals. On family in terms of performance and backlogs, the picture has some cause for hope. Our open caseload in public law is the second lowest since 2016. In private law, the open caseload has increased, but the average time taken to conclude a case has come down quite significantly from 39 to 33.5 weeks, so it is a mixed picture but there is some cause for optimism. In civil, we know that the statistics for time to trial are not necessarily that helpful because 97% or so of civil cases settle. Nevertheless, the time for civil cases to come to trial is also going down, and that tells me that the rest of the jurisdiction is also improving in performance. You can travel out from that headline statistic to some good news more generally.
I do not think it will come as any surprise that the two areas where we face pretty extraordinary acute pressures are in the criminal courts and the tribunal system. In the magistrates’ court, the open caseload at the end of last year was just under 380,000, which is 17% up compared with the previous year. The Crown Court open caseload was just over 80,000, a rise of 8% compared with the previous year. That is despite the fact that we are now sitting more days and disposing of more cases than ever before per day in the Crown Court. I will not go over the history of Crown Court sitting days, but you will remember how our allocation of sitting days has crept up from 107,000 to 108,500, 110,000 and 112,000. Thank goodness, we now have uncapped Crown Court sitting days and at present rates we are sitting about 119,000 cases, which is commendable and a testament to the extraordinary work of the judges and HMCTS across the system.
On tribunals, there are three I would pick out for you. The first is the First‑tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber where receipts continue to rise at an ever-alarming rate. As for SEND—the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal—I am told that between 2011 and 2023 the volume of appeals registered increased by almost 500%. In the employment tribunals, again there have been huge increases in the number of receipts. I think the areas where we are still running up the down escalator are particularly in crime and the tribunals.
Turning to the second part of your question about the role of AI, I think we in England and Wales have an extremely fast-moving environment. I would respectfully suggest that we have a better grip than nearly any other jurisdiction in the world when it comes to AI. We produced guidance from the very outset and it is updated regularly. I am cautiously positive about AI. Apart from anything else, it is irreversible; it is here with us to stay, but I genuinely see huge opportunities for efficiencies within the justice system in all jurisdictions, provided we move forward cautiously and carefully.
If we look, for example, at immigration tribunals, we are using AI piloting to record remarks to assist with the preparation of judgments, one of many steps we are taking. We can use AI when it comes to translation in the courts. You may have read something about the use of AI in Crown Courts. AI can be incredibly helpful, for example, in identifying which cases are ready for trial and which are not, and where a particular court centre has capacity. If one gets slightly more sophisticated, it may be that in due course AI will be able to predict which cases might or might not crack at PTPH or trial stage. That is a task that good listing officers are doing up and down the country now, trying to juggle where to list cases. There are enormous opportunities. We are not talking about AI doing the judging; it is about it doing the laundry so judges can do the art. There needs to be reassurance there, but we need to move forward with this and I think there are good news stories in all jurisdictions where we will safely use AI to reduce backlogs.
The Chair: Thank you. That is extremely comprehensive and clear.
Q3 Lord Beith: Can we look at the creation of a business and property division and the renaming of the Chancery division as a consequence? We have been told that no additional staff or judicial costs will arise from it, but it will require a negative statutory instrument and a large number of changes in the basic legislative framework. How long will this process take?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: It does not require primary legislation but an Order in Council, which will be laid next month. You are absolutely right. It is not entirely cost-neutral because we have to change the website and various computer changes have to be made, but there will be no extra staff, judges or anything like that.
Lord Beith: Will it have any impact on the admittedly less serious backlog situation in civil business that still needs improvement? Will it have any impact on that, positive or negative?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Timeliness in the business and property courts is not a major concern, so the delays we are talking about are at district bench and county court level. For the business and property courts, timeliness is pretty good. Most hearings are coming on within the year and shorter hearings will come on before that, so I do not see any negative impact in terms of timeliness. If anything, I see an improvement. One of the important features of a business and property division will be the ability to increase particular judges to specific cases so the right judge hears the right case and is able to case manage from the outset. If anything, that will have a beneficial impact on timeliness.
Q4 Lord Jones of Penybont: I should declare that I practised at the Bar in the 1990s in South Wales, a long time ago now. One thing that struck me is that most of the courts in which I practised have closed. I live in Wales’s biggest town with an urban area of 130,000 people. It lost its magistrates’ court and county court. First, what effect have court closures had in terms of backlog? Do we have enough courts to ensure that we can reduce the delays that are already experienced in the system? The second question is about legal aid. As you will know, legal aid eligibility has been tightened considerably over the past few decades. Former colleagues tell me that it has led to many people now representing themselves, particularly in the criminal courts. You will know that that slows down the case because everything has to be explained to them. What effect does that have on the backlog? Does it create a concertina effect delaying other cases that come behind those cases? If that is a problem, what might be done to resolve it?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Those are two questions. The first is about the court estate and the effect of court closures; the second is about the impact of the reduction in legal aid on backlogs.
On the court estate, you are absolutely right to emphasise the absolutely critical importance of regional justice, access to justice and a sufficient court estate. One risk in the current climate, including with AI and technology, is that it is all too easy to think that with greater and more efficient remote live links and greater use of technology we can somehow have a lesser requirement for the court estate. It is not right to say that because we will and can effectively use remote live-link hearings when appropriate somehow we do not still need court rooms. We do. Court closures in Wales, which suffered particularly badly when the court closure reform programme came in, are real issues. Real issues also arise from the uncapping of Crown Court sitting days. Many family courts sit in courts that are suitable for Crown Court trials. How do we prioritise? We cannot move family judges out of courts to unsuitable accommodation to free up the Crown Court, but at the same time we have a desperate need to use courts that are suitable for jury trials.
What assurance I can give you is that very recently we have been working with HMCTS to draw up a paper which emphasises the importance of not only a properly functioning estate, which is another topic on its own in terms of heating, water and the like, but courts in the right places. This is an absolute priority and a hot topic in the context of looking at the use of AI and technology at the same time, for reasons which I hope I have explained.
As far as concerns legal aid, of course its reduction impacts on efficiencies because litigants in person are unlikely to be able to move as fast and are likely to need more support than somebody who is represented, as you say. AI can come in again here. We are seeing AI helping litigants in person to have access to justice because they can get support in drafting their submissions. We as judges are trained to look out for fake hallucinations, fake cases and the like, but many judges say to me that they find AI-assisted submissions from litigants in person more helpful and easier to digest than submissions drafted without the support of AI. They are shorter, crafted together and so on.
To answer your question, the absence of legal aid hinders efficiency and slow things down, but mitigating steps can be taken. There is also a huge amount of pro bono work, for which the legal profession should be commended, in supporting litigants in person. I think that, if you go up and down the courts and have the chance to sit with a district judge in court, you cannot but be impressed by how able they are in dealing with litigants in person and helping them through the process. They really are expert at it. It is a skill that sometimes needs to be acquired. It is not easy; it is very difficult. Thank you for both of your important points.
Q5 Lord Burnett of Maldon: I start by declaring interests which I know are obvious to most people here. First, I was Lady Carr’s predecessor as Lord Chief Justice, so there is a good deal of continuity. Secondly, I am on the supplementary panel of the Supreme Court and continue to sit in that court from time to time.
As has become something of a custom this morning, my questions will come in two parts as well. Lady Carr, when talking about the family and civil outstanding caseloads, you made the observation that timeliness was improving despite that. My first question is to ask you to give a little more information about the nature of the problem in the Crown Court. As you say, outstanding caseloads themselves do not necessarily indicate a lack of efficiency, but neither do they in themselves tell you much about the problem, because, if there is a big outstanding caseload but it is all being dealt with very quickly, there is not really a problem. I wonder whether you could just tell us overall what is happening on timeliness in the Crown Court, particularly in non-custody cases which are not subject to statutory custody time limits which bring them on. Within that context as well, I do not know whether you can say a few words about regional variations and whether there are particular problems, for example, in London and other areas which are not so manifest elsewhere in the country.
For my second question, I think you told us last year about the work being done by the criminal courts improvement group, which is an initiative under your supervision.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: You started it.
Lord Burnett of Maldon: Maybe. It brings together all the players in the system to try to iron out obvious problems which lead to the slowing down of cases. I have not read a public update on what is going on in that group, and this might be an opportunity for you to explain what the judiciary and others are doing to reduce the outstanding caseload.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Question 1 is about a little more detail on performance in crime; question 2 is about the criminal courts improvement group.
On performance in the criminal courts, in the latest quarter of October to December 2025 the number of cases in the Crown Court open for a year or more exceeded 21,000 for the first time. The median time from charge to completion continues to rise in both jurisdictions, magistrates’ court and Crown Court. Lord Burnett quite rightly emphasises that what really matters is timeliness in terms of how quickly you are getting to trial. As for non-custody cases, as you have probably read, unfortunately we are seeing cases being listed into 2029 and, in a few cases, even 2030, which is pretty shocking. In non‑custody cases where the defendant is not in prison, within that context nevertheless it is probably of interest to the committee that we are successfully carrying out some areas of targeted listing. People refer to these courts as blitz courts. I do not like that phrase; I prefer to talk about targeted listing. In cases involving domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, we are seeing in Preston, for example, some very good, successful initiatives for expedited trials where those trials are short, no more than three days. That is proving very effective in those types of cases.
On regional variations, London suffers for all sorts of reasons, as you understand. The courts do not operate in a silo but in a cross-justice system, so you depend on the quality of case file, prisoner delivery timeliness and probation services. The whole wraparound is what contributes to overall timeliness figures. London suffers for a variety of reasons, including an enormous workload, and the Lord Chancellor has set up, as you may have heard, a London taskforce to bring together all interested agencies to work through some of the London-centric problems.
Beyond that, there are regional variations about which you may have read. Liverpool is a particularly high-performing court. Those courts that are able to operate the most flexibly are the largest ones, because that is when you can juggle work, move cases around and list in a certain way that may allow more flexibility. I think that in Liverpool there are about 19 courts. Again, Birmingham has a huge number of courts. Those courts where there are only one, two or three Crown Courts sitting at any one time do not have the same flexibility. Where there are regional variations, the reasons can be multifactorial. It can be the quality of the local Cafcass—that would not be in crime—or the local probation service and how close are the prisons. All those sorts of factors come into play. It is very dangerous to look at one court and compare it straightforwardly with another because it may not give you a fair or accurate story. Every court centre and area needs to be considered on its own merits, as it were.
The criminal courts improvement group, which started out during Covid under your leadership as the Crown Courts improvement group, now extends to both magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts. It is a judge-led group, but it is a cross-justice system group and brings together all the sorts of agencies I have talked about. The police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Legal Aid Agency and the legal professions come together to discuss and find solutions and new initiatives to tackle some of our major problems. We have six sub-groups of work going on at the moment in the following areas.
On listing, I am shortly to issue a practice direction with a national listings framework that will standardise listing across the Crown Courts and, we hope, bring very significant efficiency improvements. We have a group working on remote participation, which we talked about a little earlier. We have a group looking at pre-sentence reports. Can we speed them up? Can we make them shorter? Can we make them more effective? We have a group looking at domestic abuse and agreed national best listing practices. We have a group looking at AI, developing cross-agency approaches to AI governance involving guardrails and transparency, but looking in the criminal sector at where we can use AI efficiently. Finally, we have a group looking at better case management. There is a lot of provision at the moment for what should happen both at the first hearing in the magistrates’ courts and at each stage in the Crown Courts and what each player is supposed to have done by a certain date, uploaded and engaged with. I feel quite strongly that a lot of improvements could be achieved by everybody being able to and then doing what they are supposed to do now, so it is not necessarily a need for change but a need to do what is already supposed to happen. That is often a resource issue, but particularly when it comes to better case management the rules, ideas and principles are there. We just need to deliver.
One thing I emphasise in the context of the criminal courts improvement group is that, although these groups are judicially led, which is very important, we, the judges, do not hold all the levers and cannot take responsibility for the overall performance of the criminal justice system. There is a danger that by being on the front foot with some of this it can seem that we have all the levers and can sort it all out. We have strong convening powers and obviously have things that we as an independent judiciary can ourselves do and improve on, but we cannot run the system across the board, which I suspect is evident anyway.
We had an incredibly successful conference organised by the senior presiding judge back in February or March in the Guildhall in the City of London where all these agencies at a very high level, including Ministers, came together and talked about some of these issues. It was an extremely effective session. My strong message was that we all have to work together, that we cannot work in silos, and that means supporting each other. I often remember the words of Harry Truman: “Isn’t it amazing what you can achieve if you don’t mind who gets the credit?” Right now, right here, we need to embrace some of that spirit. If that means holding back on one of your new initiatives because there is not the resource to do that initiative and another one that perhaps the CPS needs to carry out, you stand back and wait. We need to look across the system in these very challenging times with these huge operational and delivery challenges to come together, to work together and try to find common solutions. Sharing the problems out loud in one room, to hear each other, can be very effective.
Q6 Baroness Hamwee: I was at a meeting last week when some members of the Bar from the north-west talked rather proudly about Liverpool and Preston. I was quite taken aback by what you told us about the backlog in the tribunals. For me, that raises a lot of political questions, and it would not be right to ask you about those, so I have been trying to work out how to frame this question, which I think is: is there anything at a political governmental level that this committee can take up that would be helpful to you?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: That was well phrased and therefore all the more difficult to answer.
Baroness Hamwee: I am not trying to put you on the spot.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: And we shall not seek the credit for it.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Very good. In the tribunals, what immediately springs to mind is the volume of fresh legislation. We have the Renters’ Rights Act, which will increase the burden on the property chamber in particular. We have been doing a lot of work on that with HMCTS, getting the judges ready. Also, the Employment Rights Act will have a huge impact on employment tribunals. One early step that can be taken is always to bear in mind the justice impact test and to make sure that whenever one is looking at prospective legislation and reform one looks across the board in all jurisdictions, including crime, to see what impact that will have on the system as a whole.
More granularly, the simple answer to your very good question is to emphasise the need for resourcing and recognising the huge challenges that this places on the number of judges, on the judges, and on recruitment, retention and training. The Judicial College has always been an incredibly important part of the judicial work and landscape, but it is absolutely at the top of the list at the moment, whether it is the Sentencing Act, the Renters’ Rights Act, the Employment Rights Act, the Courts and Tribunals Bill, and so on and so forth. For each and every new piece of legislation, judges need to be trained and training needs to change. We do not have a centre. We do not have a room to train in. We use conference centres around the country. The Judicial College is world class and world leading. Although we have the fewest resources and no physical presence in terms of a centre, countries around the world come to us to learn how to train judges. It is a very important piece of work and comes to mind when you ask what you can do. It is the voices of others. It is the voices of Parliament recognising what policy changes can mean for judges on the ground and the tribunals on the ground.
Q7 Lord Beith: I would like to ask a quick supplementary to Baroness Hamwee’s question, which is a factual question. Is there a mechanism by which the justice system indicates to legislating departments what the precise impact of legislation on the enforcement of the law through the courts is likely to be, whether you can cope and what might be necessary to enable you to cope?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Yes, thank you. Early engagement is absolutely key. It was one of the first things that I emphasised coming into office. It is something that I discussed with my predecessor. Early engagement with the judiciary is absolutely fundamental. It should happen and does happen. It should be one of the very first things that is considered. It happens through consultation with the senior judiciary. Can I say that there is a formal document that you will find out there laying down the procedure? I do not think there is one, but, as a matter of convention and comity, it should always be the starting point, and it does happen. We give all the information that we possibly can.
Q8 Lord Waldegrave of North Hill: This is further picking away at this subject and is probably wrong. When I sat in Cabinet, it was under the old system, of course, where the Lord Chancellor was a major political figure, as the Lord Chancellor remains, as well as a formidable judicial figure. You had Lord Hailsham or Lord Mackay of Clashfern saying, “You can’t possibly do this”. I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. This is going to get worse, because when there is no money departments want to do things, Governments want to do things, so they put the costs on other people, and especially on you and on the rest of the economy because the Treasury cannot stop them doing that. Picking up Lord Beith’s point, I wonder if we cannot somehow find a way of making a more formal mechanism so that that lost voice is more audible at the policy-making stage.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Yes, thank you. The voice should not be lost. The voice should be very audible around Cabinet through the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Justice, who has this dual role. There may be force. I do not think I could comment on whether there should be that sort of policy change. You are absolutely right. This is not just a Ministry of Justice issue. If you look at the Renters’ Rights Act, that has direct feed into the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and indeed the MHCLG is funding part of the technological work going on to be ready for the Renters’ Rights Act with HMCTS. Opportunities like this, if I may say so, Lord Waldegrave, to make these points very clear and loud, carrying that through discussion and increasing parliamentary understanding across the board, are all very important and part of the exercise. Whether there is a way of formalising it more, I do not know. I suspect it probably would not be for me to comment on, but the point is incredibly important—the need to consider. Whether it is attacking organised crime groups behind shop fronts in Manchester, that has an immediate impact on the work of the magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts. As you say, in a politically turbulent time, decisions can be made by the left hand. It all needs to be joined up and thought through.
Q9 The Chair: Are you doing any work in preparation for the potential changes in the Courts and Tribunals Bill?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Of course, that Bill is passing through Parliament, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any aspect of it at this very delicate stage. Obviously we were consulted very thoroughly by Sir Brian as he was preparing both his reports, and we will respond publicly to those recommendations in his reports that direct only to the judiciary. We will do that very shortly. We cannot fully prepare when we do not yet know what is going to happen, but we obviously have been doing thinking and as much preparation as we properly can at this stage. We will be ready, when Parliament has decided what and if it wants to do, to do our very best to support Parliament in its decisions and to implement them to the best of our ability; so, a lot of thinking, Chair, and as much preparation as is sensible at this stage.
Q10 Lord Jones of Penybont: The jurisdiction of England and Wales is uniquely odd, in my view, in the sense that it has two Governments and two legislatures. It is the only jurisdiction of its type in the entire common-law world, and that leads to some difficulties as far as the judiciary is concerned. I have lost track of the examples that I have been given by former colleagues of barristers appearing in Wales and arguing the wrong law, English law, when it comes to renters. The Renting Homes (Wales) Act is different from the Renters’ Rights Act in England. That is a problem.
As far as the judiciary is concerned, we have talked so far about engagement with this place, but not about engagement with the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament or the Welsh Government. How is that done? Legislation passed in the Welsh Parliament has an effect on the workload of the judiciary. What sort of mechanism is in place for there to be communication between government and Parliament in Wales and the judiciary in terms of the effect on the workload of the judiciary as a result of Welsh legislation being produced?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I think you were aware that I gave evidence to the Senedd in February. Did you know that? Yes. I think that was the first time that happened, and it was a very enjoyable and constructive session. The barristers may have argued the wrong law, but the judges would have known immediately that it was the wrong law because all judges who sit in Wales who have to deal with Welsh law, as they do, are trained in Welsh law by the Judicial College. We do an enormous amount of work in the Judicial College, as you know, with Welsh language and so on and so forth.
In terms of engagement, beyond the giving of evidence to the Senedd, I met with the First Minister when I was there in February. I have reached out and written to the new First Minister, and I hope that I will meet him very soon. We have engagement with parliamentary clerks in Wales as well. There are some devolved tribunals, and of course they have their own president in the shape of Sir Gary Hickinbottom. It is very important that we have appropriate engagement. We have increased the level of engagement between me and the senior judiciary and Executive in Wales, and that needs to continue. If there is a sense that there is not enough of it going on, that is something that I would want to hear. I made the approach to give evidence to the Senedd. I think it was a joint suggestion following one of my many visits to Wales that that should happen. If there is a desire for more engagement, I am the last to stand in the way of that because it is incredibly important.
We sent two of our Welsh-language judges—you know we have a cohort of specialist Welsh-language judges—to Canada in January of this year, the point being that Canada is bilingual. They came back and provided me with a comprehensive report on learning how to operate in a bilingual jurisdiction, which I will be discussing this afternoon at the Judges’ Council Committee of Wales, when we will look at how to take forward the recommendations in that paper. If there is a sense, as I say, that we are not engaging adequately, that is something that I would like to hear and take forward.
Lord Jones of Penybont: Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that. I have not been there for five years, so I do not know what the feeling is there, but I am grateful for the answers.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: If there is a feeling, please do communicate it.
Lord Jones of Penybont: I have not heard it, just to be clear.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Yes, but it is important. As I said to the Senedd, one of the many striking things about Wales is how good performance is. Because it is a relatively small jurisdiction in terms of numbers, there is a really collaborative sense between all the courts and all the judges who share best practice in a way that I would like to see travelled out across England. It is why Wales is such a pioneering jurisdiction. Nearly all, if not all, of our new initiatives in family and most of our initiatives in crime have been piloted in Wales because it tends to work so well. There is a good news story there. I know that there are issues in terms of devolution and the like—not for me. Please rest assured of my commitment.
Q11 Lord Waldegrave of North Hill: Moving on to the subject that you also mentioned in your very helpful opening statement, the number of retirements coming along all at the same time leads to two questions. It would be difficult, but is there any formal way in which this could be avoided in future? It must create real problems for some of the senior judges to know which appointment to go for and in what order and all that sort of thing. Is this a problem that you can see any way of mitigating in future?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I do not see it as a problem. I want to absolutely pay tribute to the giants of the judiciary whom we are losing: Sir Geoffrey Vos, the Master of the Rolls; Dame Victoria Sharp, President of the King’s Bench Division; Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division. Yet none of these retirements comes as a shock. These are very heavy leadership jobs. Each of those distinguished judges is 70 or over. They are hard jobs, as I know Lord Burnett would confirm. There is a great advantage to these judges leaving when they are, because a new team starts in October with a coherent single vision that we can develop and work together. We do not have to repeat ourselves. Actually, it is all very joined up, as I say. These are judges with great depth of experience, but there is handover. I have been in the job now for almost three years. I therefore do not see it as being a problem to be avoided. I think there are advantages to it.
The appointments process needs to be carefully handled for what are relatively small competitions, because there are only relatively few people who will be eligible and want to apply for these jobs. There is nothing to stop you applying for more than one job, but most people tend to have a pretty clear vision in these very big jobs of what public service role they would most like to perform. All the JAC processes have completed. With the processes going through the Lord Chancellor, then No. 10 and the King, we should shortly have announcements, I hope, of who will be the new Master of the Rolls and who will be the new President of the King’s Bench Division, in good time for the respective retirements. It is always with a heavy heart that one sees great friends, great colleagues and brilliant judges move on, but they have exciting futures ahead of them, I am sure. We will welcome in a new cohort of extremely experienced senior judges who will have been preparing themselves and thinking about taking on these roles for a very long time.
Lord Waldegrave of North Hill: That is very reassuring. Thank you.
The Chair: That is a very positive answer in an area where we wondered how that would be welcome. On the basis that you welcome it and you have your shiny new team coming along, what are the key priorities that you will be able to push forward as a result of having that new team in place relatively early on?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Do not forget it is not all new. We still have the Judicial College, judicial diversity and Senior President of Tribunals. There are many of us who are not going anywhere. Do not get the impression that everybody has disappeared. The new President of the Family Division has been in post now for a month or so, if not more.
In terms of where I would start, as you would expect, I would start by listening. I have been on the panel for each of them, so I know what their platforms and ideas are. I would want to give them time to settle down and I would want to listen and talk together with them as to what their priorities are and where they would like to go. Fundamentally, in answer to your question, talking about permanence and stability, I would continue to take forward my three key priorities, which you will remember I spoke about when I took up office: recognising and promoting our strengths, building judicial unity, and reducing our backlogs and improving timeliness while maintaining quality. Under each of those three headings, which have done me well so far, I still cannot see any gaps as to things that I want to do that are not in there somewhere. Those were the three pillars that I would still want to take forward.
The Chair: That is very helpful.
Q12 Lord Murphy of Torfaen: As a former Welsh Secretary, I was very interested in what you had to say about Wales, but I am not going to talk about that. My question relates to magistrates. What has become so evident in the last few months with the various controversies around juries and so on is how important our magistrates are and how many cases, by far the bulk of them, are heard in magistrates’ courts.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Absolutely.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen: We are told that the Government want to recruit about 2,000 new magistrates next year. Is that coming along reasonably well? Are they in fact doing that? Secondly, if there are to be 2,000 new magistrates, there is an awful lot of training to be done there. Has that been looked at seriously as well? How effective might that be?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Thank you. There are two parts again to your question, and this time I will take the second part first. You are absolutely right about the increased need for training as these new magistrates come on board. There has obviously been a huge amount of additional training need in the context of the Sentencing Act, so we have had to deliver a lot of fresh training for magistrates in that context. Since February 2024, the Judicial College has been responsible for magistrates’ training. Before then, it was separate. In fact, I used to be director of magistrates’ training back in 2014, under Lady Hallett. We now have a dedicated national magistrates’ training delivery team, and the quality of the magistrates’ training, which I have seen myself, is really good. It is less clunky than it was. It is more accessible to sign up to it. It is incredibly important and it needs resources—back to resources for the Judicial College—, which is so important.
As for recruitment of new magistrates, you started, Lord Murphy, by recognising the contribution of magistrates. As you say, 98% of criminal cases are done in the magistrates’ courts. The magistrates are an extraordinary group of people. I spend as much time as I possibly can with them. I never go out on circuit without seeing them. I have online conversation sessions with them. I have interviewed the chair of the Magistrates’ Leadership Executive team. It is really important that we all do whatever we can to recognise that it is a significant contribution.
In terms of recruiting, the recruitment programme, very much supported by the judiciary, is run by the Ministry of Justice. If you want facts and figures as to how well it is doing in detail, you must turn to it. What I do know and what obviously I support wholeheartedly is a new recruitment campaign, which is under way. It is targeting individuals aged between 35 to 49 to bring down the age profile, and people from lower income and diverse backgrounds to build a magistracy that is more diverse. I am told that the programme is delivering results and that there is an increase in the number of applications, but I am afraid I do not have actual numbers; the Ministry of Justice has those. I know that steps are being taken to speed up the recruitment process. I have heard tales of it taking far too long and, in fact, people dropping out because the process is taking 12 to 18 months or even more. There is a lot of work being done to speed up that process.
There is also a lot of work being done to look at enhancing the recognition of magistrates. It is not just getting them on board; it is also retaining them. We need to look at the magistrates’ expenses framework. We need to look around the whole issue to make sure that we are not only recruiting the magistrates but then keeping them and keeping them happy, looking after them properly, and recognising their extraordinary contribution.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen: Thanks very much indeed. That is very helpful.
The Chair: Lord Griffiths, you caught my eye just before I called Lord Murphy.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: I have always played second fiddle to him.
The Chair: Could I have you and then Lady Hamwee?
Q13 Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: Yes. The discussion thus far and in the paperwork that we have received has quite properly focused on making the whole system more accountable, understandable and efficient particularly, with backlogs and all that kind of thing. I am interested about what might be a consequence of the efficiencies being made and perhaps some of the new initiatives coming forward. I wonder if there is not possibly an unintended consequence, a kind of displacement of responsibility. Because you look to handle the backlog and therefore take a lot more cases forward, and, secondly, because, as we hear—I am very much a lay person in this field—there is a desire to have more concentration on non-custodial sentences, responsibility for handling cases will pass out beyond the courts and into the community. I wonder whether there is the capacity there.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I see. In the context of crime, if there are more community-based sentences you wonder if there will be more pressure on the community as a whole.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: That is precisely my question.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: All I can properly say on that is that these are deeply rooted policy decisions being taken by Parliament as to how to deal with offenders and where the responsibility ultimately lies. You are quite right in practical terms, as I think has been recognised by Government, that if more offenders are sentenced in the community, there will be a huge extra demand on probation services and other related services such as mental health and the like. It is a good example of a practical impact point, but in terms of whether it should happen that is not for me.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: No, I did not think that it was, although I trust you more than some of the others to get it done. For all of that, perhaps as a committee we should recognise that this is likely to be a consequence of the progress that is being made in handling our criminal justice system and ask the question about what readiness we will have to cope with these consequences.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: It is very important, going back to the justice impact point, that when changes are made by Parliament the rollout is properly managed, because there are interdependencies and timing is very important. What I have been calling for and what I believe will be produced is a blueprint. It is rather like a building project. You lay the foundations, you put the cement on top, then you build the beams and the brickwork, and you do not get the key to the front door until everything is ready. That has been a very important point that we have made time and time again. It must be properly planned and resourced.
The Chair: I turn to Lady Laing to ask a very important question about Parliament.
Q14 Baroness Laing of Elderslie: Thank you very much. We could turn now, Lady Chief Justice, to the issue of relations between the Government and Parliament and the judiciary. It has been very interesting to note this morning how positive you are about ongoing relationships between you, your colleagues and Government, and how often you have met the Lord Chancellor, other Ministers and indeed the Prime Minister. What you say in your annual report is very encouraging about that. We touched on the importance of ensuring, as you said in your annual report, that the views of the judiciary on the practical implications of policy decisions are conveyed to the Government, and we can understand why that matters so much. I wonder if you might like to expand on something you said in your opening remarks about the role of the parliamentary liaison judges, two of whom came to our breakfast a few weeks ago. It was interesting that you mentioned that right at the beginning. Would you like to tell us a bit more about what they do?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: At the moment, it is early days. I am trying to express that we need to do a great deal more and be a great deal more imaginative, and possibly even courageous, than we have in the last few years. The mandate of this group is to do just that. It is to think about being more imaginative and creative about ways of engaging. They have not come back to me yet with the full worked-up proposals, but I am going to meet with them and give them a refreshed mandate. I want to bring them on to the Judges’ Council so that they will report into the senior judiciary as well. They are now four in number, and my mandate to them is to stand back a bit and look at how we might engage more and in different ways.
Your question was really focused on engagement with Government. There is also an issue about engagement with the public, which would not be for this group but a wider question for public engagement. I have a strong feeling that we need to have a refreshed look particularly at digitally enabled ways of engaging with new sectors and new audiences. That is something I will focus on in the coming year, together with this piece of parliamentary liaison work.
It is a shared responsibility to improve this understanding, and that is something that we have discussed before. I am very grateful to the work of the committee in improving the understanding. Ideas range from whether there should be an event here, some sort of Q&A session when we meet and answer questions. I get a sense that simply disseminating written material to very busy MPs does not necessarily hit the mark. I am open to all ideas for how we can improve parliamentary understanding, and I will look to this new group to do some urgent work to look at these issues. We cannot keep saying that some of the problems arise out of a lack of understanding without really getting to grips in a slightly more aggressive way with the problem, because there are problems. What do judges do? Where do they work? How do they make their decisions? We are not across the road in the Supreme Court. We are all over the country in our 170-plus court centres. We have invited MPs round. We have had a very good uptake to that. I am very grateful to everybody for coming. More than 106 MPs have visited their local courts, with 76 more in the pipeline. Is it working? Is it resonating? Are we making the sort of difference that I feel we should be making?
In the context of some recent legislation, there was an amendment tabled in relation to judicial training. That demonstrated to me that there was an absolute lack of familiarity with Section 7 of the Constitutional Reform Act, under which judicial training is exclusively a matter for me. We must ask some back-to-basics questions in a way that is not patronising. MPs do an incredibly difficult job. They are incredibly busy. They have huge demands on their time. How do I engage interest and improve that understanding in a way that is helpful to them and helpful to the rule of law across the board? It is a challenge. I am acutely aware of it. It is something that we have discussed in the past. I am sure these four judges will come up with some good ideas, and I may come back in a less formal environment to discuss some of them with you in due course. As I say, we are very open to ideas.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie: Thank you. The very fact that we are having this conversation is in itself encouraging, and hopefully it will be picked up that we want to support what you are doing. We do, do we not, Lord Chair?
The Chair: We do very much.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie: We want to support what you are doing. Some of the conversations that we had when we last met with your colleagues at that breakfast and the regular meetings that we have are, I hope, encouraging. Your answer now to meet with us is also encouraging. There was very considerable concern not long ago about criticism of the judiciary by Members of Parliament. As you said, that is rather a different issue from criticism from the general public and in some of the media, who are more interested in the headline than the facts. That was for a while reflected in what Members of Parliament were saying. Do you think that that situation has improved with greater liaison? I am very impressed by the numbers that you have given us on MPs who visited their local courts. Is that an initiative that you hope to see the liaison judges take forward?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Yes. It is about whether we can co-ordinate it more and how we keep it going. As you know, every leadership judge in their court centre wrote to the local MP positively inviting them in, and that is something we did last October. I would want very much to foster all of that. History and experience tell me that very often local relationships can be particularly fruitful because it is easier to pop in and there is a better understanding perhaps of some of the local issues that can arise. We need to be careful. I am not going to overstep the mark in terms of engagement. It needs to be carefully managed. I have a sense that there is more that we could be doing while maintaining appropriate lines.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie: Thank you.
Q15 Lord Jones of Penybont: Much unfair criticism is levelled at judges. Members of the public believe that judges have complete freedom to sentence as they see fit. Of course, you will know, Lady Chief Justice, just as I do, that they are constrained by legislation of course as well as by sentencing guidelines in the criminal courts. I am curious. With regard to the current sentencing guidelines, is there anything about them that you think might be in need of improvement or clarification?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: That is a huge question and something that the Sentencing Council ought to deal with. It is independent. I am its president, but I am not a member of the council. It has been one of the big success stories in terms of consistency. A magistrate and a Crown Court judge nowadays would not dream of knowing where to start without starting with the Sentencing Council guideline. The evidence suggests that it has been very successful in the grand scheme of things, but I am sure the Sentencing Council is always alive to scope for improvement. Obviously, every guideline goes through a huge consultation process before anything hits the decks. It will always be watching, listening and learning, and open to improvements, I am sure.
In terms of your opening remarks, Lord Jones, about attacks on judges outside Parliament by members of the public and elsewhere, as you say, it is very important to understand the context in which judges operate. It is also very important to understand that the law, even in the context of sentencing, can be extremely complicated, particularly when you are dealing with young people or vulnerable people. The short point, if I may take the opportunity, is simply to say that, however concerned and disturbed anybody is—with good or bad reason, justified or not—nothing justifies the sort of abuse of individual judges, let alone death threats and more, that individual judges are presently subject to.
Q16 Baroness Hamwee: I have heard a number of MPs refer over the last few months to visits that they have made to local courts, and they have obviously appreciated it. Is there any scope for that being extended to Members of the House of Lords, because I think that there would be a degree of take-up?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I was just talking out in the corridor about how wonderful it would be to have you around for breakfast, just to visit. Let me take that forward. That is very welcome. Do you think that there will be interest across the board, not just within the specialist committees?
Baroness Hamwee: Probably enough to make it worth while, if not completely across the board.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: It would be helpful to get a steer from this committee as to who might be our most receptive invitees and work on that. As a matter of general principle, I would be absolutely delighted to see you.
The Chair: That is something that we could work on and have a discussion about.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Thank you.
Baroness Hamwee: I was also wondering whether there is any work going on with school students. A number of us do work through the Education Centre here. You get some quite extraordinary questions.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: And brilliant questions.
Baroness Hamwee: They are brilliant, yes. The best are from the youngest.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I remember getting one question recently, which was: how could I be independent when I was appointed by the King? That was rather a good question.
Baroness Hamwee: Yes.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Some of the questions are absolutely brilliant, as you say. May I take that up and suggest that perhaps the parliamentary liaison judges prey on your patience and have a quick word to work out how we might overlap, because we also do a huge amount of work with schools?
The Chair: Yes, that would work.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I am also very interested in the Youth Ambassadors Programme that the Attorney-General is running. These are youth ambassadors for the rule of law. I entertained them all, I hope, literally and metaphorically, in Court 4 not so long ago. I met them, talked to them and listened to each of their pitches. There were three groups, each of them coming up with amazing ideas for how to communicate the rule of law. It is what we in this room are all about. One group talked about bringing the rule of law into sports. There were all sorts of brilliant ideas. That is something else to keep your eyes out for if you hear about it. Those are two concrete action points—I like concrete action points—from this bit of the discussion. Thank you.
Q17 The Chair: In our report on the rule of law, we recommended that the judiciary should proactively communicate with the public to counter misleading narratives about the courts and their judgments. Is that something that you think is worth following up?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I completely agree with that recommendation. As I said, despite all our best endeavours, we still have an issue with communication with the public. I must start with a caveat, which is that we have constitutional limits as to what we can and cannot say and how far we can and cannot go.
The Chair: Of course.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: We also have massive resource limits. I do not have a budget that enables me to use the best, latest technology, to have the best filming, the best vox pops and all the sorts of things that one could do to communicate particularly with different audiences. Within the context of what we currently do, we do a lot, as you know. I do a lot of press engagement. We have the annual press conference, but there is engagement around the edges. We have a fairly strong social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of it. We engage with the Youth Ambassadors Programme. We have a massive transparency and open justice programme. We have the new board. You know that we have filming now being extended to the Administrative Court. That is a significant development because some of the most important cases of the day are dealt with there. That is a positive development. There are lots of TV publications and live streaming in some of our courts.
I have a sense that we need to reach new audiences. I have a very strong direction for the Judicial Office from me to our communications department that I really want to see a very focused consideration of new digital content in the next year or two, because we need to really think about how we communicate with the public more widely. We have had this discussion before. There is only so much that I can do in the sense that, if there is an agenda to hold certain views or have discourse in a certain way, there is nothing I am ever going to be able to do about that. It is not about a lack of understanding. I do believe that a better understanding generally will help those who genuinely have open minds, want to understand and then form their views. It will also limit perhaps some of the false narratives out there for other reasons.
Q18 Lord Burnett of Maldon: Could you give a little more detail about the expansion of filming into the Administrative Court, something I have to confess I failed to achieve in my time despite pressing for it? Of course, the Administrative Court deals with public law cases, which include very high-profile challenges to government policy sometimes, high-profile challenges on big infrastructure projects and matters of that sort, and are clearly of considerable public interest. When is filming of the Administrative Court going live, or is that still being worked on? I remember that the detail of statutory instruments, policies and so forth can take a lot of working through, but it has always struck me as a really important development in open justice.
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: I do not have the date, but it is imminent. All the necessary instruments have gone through. It will be for the President of the King’s Bench Division and judge in charge of the administrative list to identify the cases and press interest. I know that your early enthusiasm for the project played a part in getting to where we are. It has taken a long time. The important thing, as you know all too well, is that for live-streaming initiatives to work well we have to do it carefully and properly. We have to preserve the dignity of the court and the safety of the parties. We must not interfere with the delivery of justice. Those will all be core components of how we move it out. My understanding—and it may be that I am slipped a piece of paper from behind in a moment—is that it is imminent and that there are no potential obstacles in terms of instruments to stand in the way. It will be October 2026, I am told.
Lord Burnett of Maldon: Is it envisaged that appropriate cases will be live-streamed just as you live-stream the Court of Appeal Civil Division and the Supreme Court?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Yes. My understanding is that the emphasis will be on the delivery of oral judgments rather like sentencing remarks in the Crown Court. I do not know the extent to which the full hearing will be live-streamed, but we will do as much as we possibly can within appropriate limits.
Lord Burnett of Maldon: Thank you.
Q19 Lord Cryer: I have just been re-reading through it, but you raised in the past the personal security of judges and threats that they face. The security of public servants is a matter that is close to my heart. I was the shop steward of the Parliamentary Labour Party when two MPs were murdered, Jo Cox and David Amess. Since then, personal security of Back-Bench MPs has improved. They can avail themselves of close protection services. Ironically, the personal security of Ministers has been weakened. I have views about that but we probably do not have the time to go into it. It is something that is close to my heart. I know that you introduced a judicial security taskforce. Are you now in a position where you are at least reasonably confident about the personal security of judges?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Security is a matter close to your heart, but it is also foundational to the rule of law. We have discussed that on many occasions. It is about protecting the rule of law. It is not just about protecting individual judges. There are some very high-level arguments to be made. Just to emphasise, judicial security lies at the heart of diversity initiatives, because we know that underrepresented groups are more exposed to abuse and online attacks, and that deters people from applying for high-profile positions. It is foundational to the transparency work that we just talked about. If you are filmed, you are more likely to be recognised and you are more exposed. It is also connected to transparency of conduct decisions. The more transparent we are about disciplinary matters, the more exposed the judge may be to the sort of attacks that we are trying to protect them against.
This was a priority for me when I took up on day one. It remains an absolute priority for me. As you kindly recognise, as a result of that focus, we have made very significant strides. I pay tribute to Lady Justice Yip, the incoming Senior Presiding Judge, who chaired the judicial security taskforce that I established a year and a half or so ago, because she has led some remarkable work. We have made significant improvements, not only to the physical estate in courts. We see minimum requirements for exits and usher attendants being met. We have also done a good job—and I am not taking credit for this—of raising judicial awareness of the need to protect ourselves. We have a centralised training package on our Judicial College website. We are going to produce a single guide for the judiciary covering the offer across the board. We are looking at establishing single points of contact for judges to contact when security dangers arise. We have raised awareness, which is an important part of the challenge, not to take risks and to be aware of the steps that judges can take to protect themselves and the support that is available for them when they need it.
We have also worked very well with the Met and the National Police Chiefs’ Council looking at our risk assessment models, strengthening existing procedures and raising awareness in police stations of the operation that triggers various procedures for judges when they are under threat.
But when we look abroad, for example to Canada where Lady Justice Yip visited for the very purpose of understanding what gold standard judicial protection might look like, it is clear to me that there is more that we can do. In Ottawa, they have for only 300 judges a dedicated judicial security office made up of security experts, including former police officers and others within intelligence agencies, whose sole job is to horizon scan and protect judges. That would be very welcome here in this jurisdiction for 24,000 judges, not just 300.
Am I reasonably confident? I am more confident than I was a year or two ago about where we are on judicial security. Can I say it does not worry me every day? No, I cannot. We need to be on constant alert and to continue the work with our judges and with those who are there to protect us to make sure that we are properly looked after. In a nutshell, these are not negotiable issues. These are adequate security measures that must be put in place because they link into so many other bits of the system that we are looking to improve and work on. It makes sense on a higher level, as well as just individual security concerns.
Lord Cryer: As a supplementary to that, you mentioned in the past judges being doorstepped. Is that kind of thing becoming more common now than it was a few years ago?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: Yes.
Lord Cryer: Right, okay, thank you. Can I ask another question? It is not really related to that. There have been concerns about bullying and stress among judges. The Harman review was published earlier this year and there was the Judicial Attitude Survey. What steps have been taken to minimise the stress and bullying of judges?
Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the Hill: We very much welcomed Baroness Harman’s independent review. She shone a light and provided evidence on a number of very important issues in the context of bullying at the Bar.
Judicial conduct is of course something that we have been working on since 2021 when a statement of expected behaviour was introduced, and it is an area of significant focus and one where—thank you for the question—we have been making real progress. We have worked very closely with the Bar Council both before, during and after Baroness Harman’s review, and we are now closely engaged with the new Commissioner for Conduct, Dame Maria Miller, who may be known to some of you and is very impressive. She has come to meet me and Lady Justice Whipple, who is our judge in charge of diversity and inclusion. I hope very much that she will be welcomed in our courts around the country and given every support that she needs to tackle these very serious issues.
There is increased awareness of the issue. There is now a realistic acceptance within the judiciary of the problems that we have. There are instances of judicial bullying, and any instance is one too many. We just need the evidence. We need people to feel free to come forward with genuine complaints. There is a real challenge with that because legal professionals are for lots of reasons often very inhibited in coming forward. That is one reason why one of the new initiatives in terms of priority is the introduction of an informal complaints route. That route has in fact always been there, but we are now putting it into a document, a protocol, that has been rolled out across the judiciary and shared with the Bar Council.
Obviously, a very serious instance must go straight to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office. I am not suggesting anything to the contrary. But a loose remark at the end of a day by a tired judge who did not realise the impact of a certain statement is something that can be addressed overnight through leadership judges and resolved to everybody’s satisfaction in an appropriate way and to nobody’s detriment. That is what I am really keen on and is what I am working on with others. It will not solve all problems, but it will help enormously in many situations at improving awareness. We can see a change in culture within the judiciary and an acceptance of the issue and the need to address it. We now talk about these issues, as we did at the resident judges’ conference last Friday, openly in the round with everybody there in a way that I simply do not think would have been imagined 10 years or so ago. There is lots to do, with no room for complacency, and lots of new initiatives, but an openness and discussion with the professions, and an increasing awareness within the judiciary.
Lord Cryer: Okay, thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. You will be pleased to hear that we have come to the end of our discussion with you, and done so relatively quickly. We will now close the public session of this meeting.
