The United Kingdom’s judiciary is among the least diverse of many European and Western countries, human rights group reports

Serious interventions are needed to improve diversity in the overwhelmingly white, male and privileged judiciary of England and Wales, a human rights group has said after reporting that the country’s judges are among the least diverse of a host of developed nations.

The human rights group Justice has reported that Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, South Africa and the United States all have more diverse judiciaries than England and Wales, where judges are still mostly “white, privately educated men.” As the Law Gazette reports, among Council of Europe members only Armenia and Azerbaijan have lower proportions of women in their judiciaries than England and Wales, highlighting the structural barriers faced by women, BAME lawyers and those from less wealthy backgrounds. Justice has now called for “targets with teeth” to improve diversity among judges, with the teeth taking the form of monitoring, transparency and progress reporting to Parliament’s justice select committee of MPs.

There will soon be opportunities to put those proposals into action at the most senior level of the judiciary, if there is a willingness to do so – six Supreme Court judges are set to retire by 2019, with a further six vacancies to open up by 2026. Justice has therefore called for an overall target for 40% of Supreme Court judges to be women by 2026, with this broken down into smaller targets for each round of vacancies.