‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds naught and six, result misery.’
Mr Micawber’s dictum helps explain why many district judges, most of whom qualified as solicitors, are so discontented. This year’s Judicial Attitude Survey shows that six out of 10 DJs reported a loss of net earnings between 2022 and 2024. That means they earned less money than they spent.
A similar proportion of DJs do not feel they are paid a reasonable salary for what they do. That contrasts sharply with the eight out of 10 Court of Appeal judges who do reckon they are paid a proper wage.
District judges earn £134,000 a year, more than 3.5 times the average UK salary for full-time employees. That’s about the same as a deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, or a specialist vascular surgeon.
Is it enough?
Such comparisons are invidious. To an informed layperson, £134,000 probably seems more than adequate, if not generous, for one of the lower rungs on the judicial ladder. But it is human nature to look not at crude averages, but the earnings of those who fall into the category of peers. For over-45s, the bigger salaries of colleagues or professionals in the same field have been found to harm self-esteem and reduce life satisfaction. That £134,000 doesn’t look so bountiful when there are 20-something NQs in London earning considerably more, for example.
The Ministry of Justice has countered that judges’ pay was increased by 7% last year, on top of a 6% rise the previous year, while pension reforms have made the overall remuneration package more generous. Unfortunately, pay hikes a few percentage points above inflation are unlikely to head off the ‘looming retention and recruitment crisis’ flagged by the survey. That will take substantial net investment in an infrastructure and profession that have been respectively neglected and traduced by irresponsible politicians.
The most dispiriting of the blizzard of statistics in the survey is the finding that just 9% of judges feel valued by the government. Therein lies another reason why the lady chief justice was right to chide the prime minister that ‘it is for the government visibly to respect and protect the judiciary’.
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