The Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill contains provisions governing health assessments - both physical and mental - for prospective judges.
In an article in the most recent Parliamentary Brief (requires subscription), Conservative Peer (and Professor of Government at Hull) Lord Norton of Louth singles out these provisions as being "hardly heavyweight constitutional territory". The Bill also tinkers with the judicial appointments process, revokes the unpleasant laws banning protests around Parliament, puts the existence of the Civil Service on a statutory footing, limits the powers of the Attorney General, etcetera - so one can see why Lord Norton might take that view. His Lordship has really done the heavy lifting in opposing the bill in the Upper House, so one is loathe to disagree with him, but...
It seems to me that this issue is important. Admittedly, the provisions are not new - the Judicial Appointments Commission already has similar assessment powers once prompted to use them by the Lord Chancellor. But, given that they are being revisited, what strikes me is what is omitted rather than what is included.
There are no provisons for checks once the nominee is in place.
You can see the point immediately. Judges are (rightly) respected and powerful people. They are, as a result, difficult to challenge. Real problems can be masked by or passed off as eccentricity. We effectively rely on people noticing if there's a problem, and on a discreet tap on the shoulder when it's brought to the attention of someone in a position to deliver it - but that's a far from perfect system and if action comes it may often be too late, with real and harmful effects resulting in the lives of people in a position of weakness before the justice system.
Probing the health of our senior arbiters of the law may be thought impertinent - but given the significance of the role and, moreover, given the fact that the principle has already been accepted in that such probing is already sanctioned for nominees, perhaps this point might have been addressed in Gordon's scattergun Constitutional Bill.
