A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IT looks as though there would be some difficulty about the proposed increase in Judges' salaries. About one point I imagine there will be general agreement. Having regard to the great position they hold, to the heavy reduction in income which elevation to, the bench means for most of them and to the fact that their salaries have remained fixed since 1832, Judges are, by comparison not merely with barristers but with men at the top of various other professions, scandaleusly underpaid. To put an extra £1,000 a year in their pockets is no more than a tardy and scanty act of justice. But to put the £1,000 in their pockets is much more of a problem than it seems. Protests against making the payment free of tax are already rife, and there are, in fact, obvious objections to discriminating in this way in favour of a particular body of men. But what is the alternative ? Tax (income-tax and surtax) for a man and wife with one child with the income of £5,000 which is what both High Court Judges and Lord Justices of Appeal get, amounts to £2,456, leaving a balance of £2,544. On an income of £6,000 it is £3,206, leaving £2,794—a net improvement of £250 instead of the £1,000 increment which is very rightly intended. Indeed it is actually worse than that, for by the time a man is raised to the bench his children are off his hands, so he does not even get the allow- ance for one child; and as he must have some private means after a successful career at the Bar he will in fact be already in something higher than the £5,000-a-year category. Surtax on the additional £1,000 will therefore be higher than in the calculation I have made, and the actual increase therefore will be even less than £250. All this being so, it seems to me that, in spite of the apparent objections, it is quite right to make the extra £1,000 tax-free. After all only fewer than eighty persons are involved, and they are persons in a very special position. There is nothing there to constitute a precedent.
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