7.The Criminal Justice Review recommended that the Commission should be representative of the community in Northern Ireland (recommendation 79, paragraph 6.104). Section 3(8) of the 2002 Act provides that the First and Deputy First Ministers must ensure, so far as possible, that the lay members of the Commission are representative of the community in Northern Ireland.
8.Subsection (1) of this section replaces this duty with a duty for the Lord Chancellor and those others responsible for making nominations to the Commission (the Lord Chief Justice, the General Council of the Bar in Northern Ireland and the Law Society of Northern Ireland) to make such arrangements as will, so far as is practicable, ensure that the membership of the Commission as a whole is reflective of the community in Northern Ireland.
9.Under paragraph 2(2) of Schedule 2 to the 2002 Act, a person may only be appointed as a non-judicial member of the Commission for up to five years at a time, for a maximum of ten years. Subsection (2) inserts new paragraphs (1) and (1A) into Schedule 2 to the 2002 Act to place the same time limits on the Commission’s judicial members.