NON-LAWYER - BARONESS PRASHAR 

Our Non-lawyer of the Month is Baroness Usha Kumari Prashar, the Chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC).

Usha was born in Kenya in 1948. She came to the UK in 1964 to study for her A’ levels and attended WakefieldGirlsSchool in Yorkshire, where she later became the Head Girl in 1966. Usha went to the University of Leeds to read Political Studies and graduated in 1970. She attended the University of Glasgow where she did her postgraduate in Social Administration.

Usha has had a long and distinguished career in public service and the not-for-profit sector. Her first role was as the Conciliation Officer in the then, Race Relations Board. This role strongly convinced her of how fundamental the issue of race relations is to public policies.

In 1976, Usha became the Assistant Director of the Runnymede Trust and a year later became the director, a post she held until 1984. Between 1984 and 1986, Usha was a fellow at the Policy Studies Institute and between 1986 and 1991; she was the director of the National Council for Voluntary organisations. From 1992 until 1997 Usha had a portfolio of activities. These included: membership of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct, the Arts Council and a non-executive director of Channel 4. 

In 1997, she became the first female executive chair of the Parole Board of England and Wales and remained in that post until 2000. In 2000, she was appointed the first Civil Service Commissioner, a post she left in December 2005 when she became the first Chair of the newly established Judicial Appointments Commission.

Usha was made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1994. In 1999, she was made a life peer, sitting as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.

The establishment of the JAC in 2005 was a very radical overhaul of the way judges are appointed following long standing concerns about the transparency of the appointment of judges. Usha’s role at the JAC is unprecedented and she, along with 14 other commissioners (who are lawyers, judges, magistrates, other professionals and lay members) have assumed the Lord Chancellor’s role of appointing most of our judges. Usha started her new role with some unenviable statistics: 4% of our judges in the lower courts and a meager 0.6% in the higher courts are ethnic minorities. Mrs Justice Dobbs remains the first and only ethnic minority High Court Judge since 2003 with the absence of ethnic minority judges in the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. Usha is determined to see a more diverse judiciary – more ethnic minorities, more women, more solicitors and more people from more varied background that reflects the society that the judges serve.

Usha’s various other appointments have included a member of the Management Committee of the Kings Fund from 1998-2002, a board member of Salzburg Seminar, an American educational organisation based in Austria from 2000-2004, a member of the House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights from 2001-2004, she chaired the Law Society’s Governance Review Group from 2003-2004, she was a member of the Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System from 2003-2004, Chair of the National Literacy Trust from 2001-2005 a non-executive director of Unite Group Plc from 2001-2004, Chancellor  of De Montfort University from 2000-2006, a trustee of the BBC World Service from 2000-2005, and a member of the Arts Council of England and Wales.  Since 2001 she has been the Chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society, since 2003 a Governor and member of the management committee of the Ditchley Foundation and since 2005 a non-executive director of the ITV board.

Usha is married to a solicitor.

 Below is our interview with Usha.

 BLD:    What was the best career advice you were given?

UP:      Whatever you do, do it for the right reasons and with integrity

BLD:    What is the best career advice you will give to others?

UP:      I would pass the same advice to others as it has proved to be the right advice.

BLD:    If you were to choose another job/role, other than what you are doing, what would it be and why?

UP:      I am doing the job that I really want to do. If I had to choose another role it would be where I can make a real difference to eradicating inequality and poverty.

BLD:    Tell us the person you most admire (dead or alive) and why?

UP:      Mahatma Ghandhi – his principles and practices are more relevant today than ever before. Achieving peaceful social transformation, peaceful co-existence, mutual respect, political and economic justice through non-violence is the key to the challenges facing us today.

BLD:    What would you say was the most challenging diversity issue you have had to tackle in your professional role to date?

UP:      The most challenging issue has been and continues to be that of mainstreaming equality and diversity and making them an integral part of public policies.

BLD:    What are the issues and challenges on diversity that need to be tackled now or are being tackled by the JAC?

UP:      The greatest challenge for the JAC is to encourage more applicants with diverse backgrounds to apply and to help create a more diverse judiciary.

BLD:    What are you most passionate about?

UP:      Justice

BLD:  What makes you angry?

UP:      Injustice

BLD:    If you could rule the world for a day what would you change?

UP:      Abolish exploitation of children