Bench and silk appointments system to face stiff criticism, warns commissioner

REPORT: watchdog Sir Colin Campbell calls on Law Society to rejoin the consultation process

The current system for appointing judges and Queen's Counsel will face significant criticism in the next few weeks, the new watchdog of the process told the conference.

Sir Colin Campbell, the first commissioner for judicial appointments, told delegates that his forthcoming first report would express serious concerns about the way in which the system operates.

He said his office had received at least a dozen complaints from applicants for both the bench and silk, and that several of these had been upheld.

Sir Colin was appointed in March last year in an effort by the government to deflect the argument that judges and QCs are appointed in a climate of secrecy that discriminates against solicitors, women and ethnic minority applicants.

At the conference, Sir Colin called on the Law Society formally to rejoin the consultation process on which the appointments system is based.

The Society withdrew from the so-called secret soundings system some three years ago in protest at its lack of transparency and potential for discrimination.

'If we are to re-engineer the appointments process, then the views of the Law Society would be enormously useful,' said Sir Colin.

In response, Graham White, the chairman of Chancery Lane's criminal law committee, predicted the Society would rejoin the process.

'I have every expectation that we will be back on board very soon,' he said, pointing out that when the Society's ruling council reviewed the position two years ago, the decision to stay out of the process was maintained by only a thin majority.

But a senior Society policy adviser, Barbara Cahalane, cautioned against assuming that Chancery Lane would soon rejoin the consultations.

'We realise that by being out of the process we may be damaging the pool of candidates who are automatically known to the consultees.

But we have to stand by the larger pool of candidates who are not automatically known to the consultees.'

Meanwhile, the former top civil servant at the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) defended the current system of confidential consultations.

Sir Thomas Legg, who was head of the judicial appointments group at the LCD, maintained that it would be impossible to obtain candid views about candidates if the consultees could not protect their anonymity.

Another LCD official indicated to delegates just how popular the prospect of joining any level of the bench is with lawyers.

Jenny Williams, the LCD's current director general of judicial appointments, said that last year the department had received more than 4,200 applications for a total of about 900 judicial posts.

Jonathan Ames