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Women, Justice and Gender Equality

I sympathise with my hon. Friend, but it is bad for children to be brought up in workless households. When I had just entered Parliament, I was lucky enough to do a short internship with one-parent families, and it is clear that in most one-parent families the parent wants to go out to work. Let me come back to the subject of my Department for what will no doubt be a pretty brief interlude. The DCA has a good foundation of supportive networks to help staff achieve their potential, including the DCA’s women’s issues network, which I have just had the terrific pleasure of addressing. Strong staff foundations are important, and we have them, so we can now look outwards and ensure that our services are delivered fairly. To turn to the justice system, we are making progress in the number of women appointed to judicial office. Year on year, the statistics show that the figures are going up. In 1999, women represented only 24 per cent. of judicial appointments to courts and tribunals. I am pleased to say that figures published by the Department today show that overall, by 2005-06, the figures for the appointment of women had increased to 41 per cent. That is a result of initiatives to encourage greater flexibility and ensure that a wider range of candidates apply. Those initiatives have included a career break scheme for salaried judiciary at below High Court level, and the extension of part-time working to the majority of salaried members of the judiciary. Interestingly, there is a tradition of part-time working in the courts. Practitioners, from deputy district judges at the bottom of the system to recorders and deputy High Court judges, sit for days or weeks, while continuing to practise the rest of the time. As court lawyers earn reasonable pay, the rates for such part-timers have had to be good to attract people to do work that is in the public interest, instead of otherwise more profitable work. It is ironic that, contrary to its reputation for conservatism, the judiciary might help my Department to lead on, and demonstrate success in, promoting flexible working patterns. My guess is that some of the new women judges are at the junior end of the judiciary, but that might be apt for younger women anyway. There is increasingly a career structure within the judiciary, in which people are promoted from district judge to circuit judge, and from circuit judge to High Court judge. It is important to get women into that career structure, to kindle their ambition for promotion, and to provide flexibility in movement up the chain.