CONFIDENTIAL
"Bench a Judge whose professional experience was of a different
kind from that of the average Service Judge. The question of fair treatment for Service Judges is, of course, subsumed in Sir Michael Gass' condition (c).
"If members of the local Bar were henceforth to be
considered pari possu with members of the Service for promotion
to the Supreme Court Bench this would, I think, give members
of the Service a legitimate grievance that might justify them
in asking for compensation for loss of career prospects, ao Sir Michael envisages. But if such appointments were to be
made only occasionally so that the Bench contained only one or
at the most two non-Service appointees at any one time, a claim for compensation by members of the Judicial and Legal Services on the ground that their career prospects had been materially prejudiced would not in my opinion be justifiable, for the position would not in any way be analogous to the localisation schemes that have been held to justify compensa-
tion in other territories.
"Un pensions Sir Michael Gass observes that it would cause
considerable resentment in the Service if a directly appointed Judge were to be off-red "terms of service better than those
available to serving officers". To describe the terms as "better" is, with respect, a complete misrepresentation of the
position. If one asks a member of the practising Bar to
leave his practice and go onto the Bench when he is, say, in
his fifties or late forties, one cannot in fairness expect him to accept pension arrangements designed for people who will
have thirty years or more of pensionable service by the time
they retire. It is not therefore a case of according the directly appointed Judge "better" pension terms than other people but of modifying the general pension terms to ensure
that such a Judge receives fair treatment having regard to the
fact that his actual service must in the nature of things be
very much shorter than that of an ordinary member of the
Judicial Service.'
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