Judges need a big pay rise, says law chief

Judges should be awarded substantial pay rises to compete with the best civil servants and high-ranking members of the military, the senior law lord told The Independent.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill, a former lord chief justice and master of the rolls, says the pay gap between judges and senior public sector staff, as well as high-earning barristers, is wider now than it has been for more than a hundred years. His comments are sure to fuel the row over the Lord Chancellor's recent £22,000 pay rise.

As head of the judiciary, Lord Irvine of Lairg's salary has risen to £202,000, an increase of more than four times the rate of inflation. But Lord Bingham supports the award and also calls for across-the-board pay increases for all judges, who from April will earn between £92,000 and £200,000 a year.

Despite efforts by the Senior Salaries Review Board to bridge the gap between civil service and judicial pay scales, top civil servants are, on average, paid £50,000 more than their judicial counterparts, with the most senior posts attracting salaries of £250,000.

Lord Bingham, who from April will be paid £188,000, argues that one way of redressing the balance would be to introduce performance-related pay awards. But he acknowledges that such a system would face real "constitutional" problems because of the difficulty in measuring the quality of justice dispensed by each judge. Instead, Lord Bingham would prefer an across-the-board increase for the judiciary. He warns, however, that if nothing is done, the justice system will continue to miss out on the best legal minds. "If you want to recruit people at a relatively youthful age, then you have got to offer a reasonably attractive salary," he says. "The really important thing is the salary of the High Court judge, because that is the man or woman that you really want to attract and everything else should be scaled upwards and downwards from that."

Barristers of the ability and experience of Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Master of the Rolls, are earning fees in excess of £1m a year.

* Sandi Toksvig, the writer and broadcaster, is to join Lord Bingham as candidate for the chancellorship of Oxford University. She will stand as a "no fees" candidate in the election. As a Liberal Democrat supporter, she will announce her candidature at the launch today of the party's campaign against top-up fees.