Judicial independence cited in decision not to cut judges' pay

The salaries of the city's judges will not be reduced this year, after the chief executive accepted recommendations made under a new system for setting judicial salaries.

Citing the need to respect judicial independence, a government spokesman said yesterday that the Chief Executive in Council had ordered a pay freeze for 2009-10 in line with advice from the Standing Committee on Judicial Salaries and Conditions of Service.

It was the first time the new mechanism, separate from that which decides the pay of civil servants, had been used and followed an assertion by the government last year that there was no need for a law to protect judges' pay.

The decision comes as senior civil servants are smarting over a 5.38 per cent pay cut, which the Hospital Authority is passing on to its doctors.

But it is in line with recognised common law principles stressing financial security and security of tenure for the judiciary, and the committee said that nowhere else in the common law world had judges' pay been cut, despite the global recession.

A note accompanying the committee's review stated that in the light of the global economic downturn, other jurisdictions had postponed or moderated pay increases for judges.

'It is noteworthy that none of these jurisdictions proposed any reduction in judicial salaries in 2008 and 2009,' it said. 'Indeed, as stated in our 2005 report, some major overseas jurisdictions have constitutional or legislative protection against reduction in judicial remuneration as a measure to safeguard judicial independence.'