Ministers are on a collision course with some of the country’s most senior legal figures over plans to make judges pay more into their pension pot.
Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, with three former Lord Chancellors — the Lords Falconer of Thoroton, Mackay of Clashfern and Irvine of Lairg — are fighting the Pensions Bill that is going through the Lords.
They argue that the proposals, which would enable future governments to amend the contribution that judges make to their pensions, put at risk their constitutional independence.
They also believe that the plans could be unlawful because they would change the terms on which judges have accepted their posts.
Lord Woolf, who was Lord Chief Justice from 2000 to 2005, told The Times: “I am not seeking to suggest that judges in these difficult times are not to have their position scrutinised.
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“But I take the same view as the three recent Lord Chancellors — that it is quite wrong, when a judge has been appointed, to impose upon him (or her) an obligation to make a contribution out of his salary for dependants, when there was no such requirement when he signed up for the job.”
The proposals — which will have their committee stage in the House of Lords this week — could “well be open to legal challenge”, he added.
Lord Woolf, who is unaffected personally by the proposals, insisted that he was not being “put up” by the judiciary to speak and was acting independently.
But judges are known to be worried by the proposals, which would require them to pay more into the pensions that they have for their wives or dependants. At the moment judges make no personal contribution towards their pension but pay between 1.8 per cent and 2.4 per cent of salary towards the pension that their spouse will receive when they die.
Together with a further expected pay freeze in April, the increased pension contribution could amount to an effective cut in earnings of six per cent. One senior judge said: “People are very demoralised and there is a concern that this might affect recruitment.”
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Judges are making no public comment about the plans amid concern that they will appear to be wanting to be treated as a special case.
But Lord Woolf said that judges, whose salaries range from £103,000 for district judges to £173,000 for High Court judges and £240,000 for the Lord Chief Justice, take a huge pay cut when they go to the bench and the pension is part of the package that they receive.
Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, argued that it is “right that judges, like other public service pension members, should begin to contribute towards their own pensions”. He added: “We do not believe that taking personal contributions from judges amounts to salary reductions.”