News Release

12th March 2001

POLITICAL DISCRIMINATION IN STAFFORDSHIRE COURTS?

Michael Fabricant has today tabled Parliamentary questions to the Lord Chancellor following a letter, which has just come to light, from the Advisory Committee on Justices of the Peace for Stoke-on-Trent. The letter has been widely circulated in Staffordshire and has been sent out in an attempt to recruit new magistrates. It states "The Advisory Committee is particularly keen to receive applications from .... Labour Party supporters".

"This is an outrageous corruption of our judicial system", says Michael Fabricant. "A copy of this letter was sent to me by an angry constituent in Abbots Bromley who is a member of the W.I. who received the letter in her Women's Institute Newsletter. If the Advisory Committee are interested in a politically balanced magistrates' bench, why did they not also invite applications from supporters of the Liberal-Democrats, Green Party and others? As my constituent says: 'This blatantly brings politics into judicial recruitment'.

"Following on from the dinner where the Lord Chancellor asked for political donations, this is yet another example of party politics permeating through the legal system under THIS Lord Chancellor. I hope he will now disown this letter.