The government's plans for reform of the process for selecting judges are flawed and could end up perpetuating current weaknesses, the Commission for Judicial Appointments (CJA) warned last week.

Sir Colin Campbell, chairman of the independent commission set up to scrutinise the appointments process for judges, said plans contained in the Constitutional Reform Bill to scrap the independent audit of judicial appointments procedures were 'wrongheaded' and would remove a guarantee of fairness.


He said: 'We need to accept that the new system will not be perfect. An audit function would help us pick up if it was becoming too politically correct, or [adopting] old tap-on-the-shoulder practices.'


The CJA has approached 150 peers to bring forward amendments to the Bill as it appears before the House of Lords this week. The Bill will create a judicial appointments commission (JAC) responsible for selecting judges. The CJA itself does not select judges but monitors the process by which they are appointed.


Sir Colin said the JAC must have a majority of lay members and criticised provisions in the Bill that will make it a recommending body only.


He said: 'The JAC should make the vast majority of decisions. There is an argument for the Lord Chancellor to have a veto power in the High Court and above, as long as he can reject but not supplant [the applicant] with someone who has not gone through the process. But there are another 2,000 appointments that will be sent to his department [under the current proposals].


'Either there will be a big bureaucracy, which is daft, or decisions will be made on a whimsical or informal basis, which is unacceptable.'


Meanwhile, the Department for Constitutional Affairs was this week expected to publish a consultation paper inviting suggestions on how to improve judicial diversity. It will examine factors inhibiting diversity in the conditions required to become a judge, the appointments process and judicial working practices.