A PRIVATE members’ club for privileged white men: this is still how Britain’s senior judiciary appears to the public, undermining confidence in our whole legal system. Yet this tainted image could change from April next year, when a new body, the Judicial Appointments Commission, is established to replace the outdated selection system with one that is more suited to our modern, multicultural society. An announcement about the crucial role of chairman of the commission is imminent.

The chairman and other commission members will have a hard task. For among the forty-one Court of Appeal judges, there are just two women and of the twelve judges in the House of Lords there is only one woman. Furthermore, a judge from an ethnic minority background has never been appointed to either of these courts, and there is only one black woman in the High Court.

While many agree that the current selection process is unfair, some argue that, given time, women and ethnic minority lawyers will reach the higher echelons. But the notion that the lack of women at the top is because they have only recently entered the legal profession, from where judges are recruited, holds no ground. The first pioneering women to enter the profession did so almost a century ago.

Moreover, the Commission for Judicial Appointments (CJA), the independent body that audits the system for appointing judges and QCs, has strongly dismissed the notion that “trickle-up” will redress the lack of diversity over time, and has instead uncovered evidence of systemic bias against women and ethnic minority lawyers.

At the heart of the problem with the system is the use of “soundings”, or consultations, with senior judges in order to identify and assess candidates to join their ranks. Many believe this system, in which those already in the club choose who else should join, has inevitably led to more of the same sort — privileged, male lawyers — being chosen.

The CJA has found that these soundings bring out subjective and irrelevant references to the dress sense or marital status of female candidates. Furthermore, the need to be already “known in the club” puts women and ethnic minority candidates at a disadvantage, because they often do not belong to the same networks as the senior judges consulted. As research for the Government has shown, these clubs and networks actually put them off applying in the first place.

There is also strong evidence to support the benefits of more transparent recruitment methods. Tribunals and magistrates’ courts, which have fairer and more modern selection processes, employ judges from a much more diverse background. And Fawcett’s Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System has found widespread demand for a judiciary that looks more like the community it serves. This is particularly so with cases such as rape trials, where female victims have complained for years that they feel they are the ones on trial in a male-dominated system. More diverse and representative judges would bring confidence to the legal process at all levels.

We are at a critical stage in the creation of the new commission, as members are currently being recruited. They will play a key part in modernising our judiciary. They will be responsible for devising and overseeing a new approach to recruiting judges, at a time when the Law Society and the Bar Council are working together to create a fairer system for appointing QCs.

Importantly, of the fifteen commission members, six will be lay people, including the chairman, and nine will be from a legal and judicial background. Legal experience is vital, but so is experience of appointing and managing in large organisations. The commission will oversee thousands of appointments, ranging from Court of Appeal judges all the way down to magistrates’ courts eventually. It is also essential that the new commission is robust and independent of government.

The Constitutional Reform Act, which establishes the commission, imposes a duty on it to consider diversity issues. The chairman must use this power to ensure that the pool from which judges are drawn is widened.

Furthermore, the commission will be subject to a duty on public bodies to promote equality on the ground of race and, in the future, will also be subject to equality duties in respect of dis-ability and gender. The commission must actively use these duties to increase diversity in the judiciary — for example, by not appointing judges from barristers chambers or law firms that do not themselves promote diversity.

We are at a crossroads. There is a danger that the same complaints levelled at the current system could be applied to the new body if it simply recreates the same processes in all but name. Instead, the chairman and members of the new commission must boldly seize this rare chance to create a system that is fit for a modern democracy, where our judges are members of our diverse society — not simply members of the right club.

The author is MP for Redcar and chairwoman of Fawcett’s Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System

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