Senior Conservative figures have pushed the idea of supervising and even challenging judges who are perceived as not doing their jobs properly.

Shadow justice minister Kieran Mullan told a fringe event of the Conservative Party Conference on Monday that judges needed to be properly answerable to the public.

Describing the judiciary as ‘one of the great unreformed public services’, he compared the legal system as being comparable to the medical profession, which was resistant to – but ultimately accepted – greater scrutiny.

‘There is a journey we need to go on around how we make the judiciary more accountable,’ he said.

Mullan, who has a medical background, said he was motivated to look further into judicial accountability when a constituent foster carer came to him after a family court judge had ruled that a child should live with their birth parents. The child was then left with life-altering injuries after being assaulted by their parents.

Mullan said he had asked the lady chief justice to discuss how judges might be held to account in the light of the case – while being careful not to propose discussing the case – but was told she would not meet with him.

Asked by Conservative peer and former Bar Council chair Baron Sandhurst (Guy Mansfield KC) whether he was effectively arguing for a US system where some judges are appointed by the executive, Mullan called for the UK to explore a ‘halfway house’.  ‘We have to be careful around encroaching too much on the trust and confidence in our judiciary,’ he said, before drawing again on the comparison with the medical profession. ‘We don’t look at everything a surgeon does but we might look at surgeon’s outcomes and identify where a surgeon’s practice is way out from everyone else’s.’

Earlier on Monday, at a separate event, former home secretary and now backbench MP Suella Braverman called for a ‘culture of judicial deference’ to be restored, where judges reflect the will of parliament rather than their own political preferences.

Suggesting a ‘sweeping out’ of judges perceived to be involved in activism, she put forward a regime of periodical reviews of judicial decisions by parliament.

‘If we do get an activist judge and they issue a ridiculous decision that is on the front pages of the Daily Mail and everyone is horrified by it, the solution is that parliament steps in and corrects it,’ said Braverman.