Judges would regret Human Rights Act repeal, warns Lady Hale Lady Hale, a leading member of the supreme court, also said judges should hail from different parts of the legal world to ensure gender equality. Photograph: Getty The UK's most senior female judge has said her fellow justices would "regret" any decision by a future government to repeal the Human Rights Act. Lady Hale, a leading member of the supreme court and a potential candidate for the post of deputy president, also said that withdrawing from the human rights court in Strasbourg would require Britain to leave the EU. She was answering questions from students and others at the London School of Economics on Wednesday evening as part of a conversation chaired by Prof Conor Gearty. Asked first about benefits of repealing the Human Rights Act 1998, a suggestion made by the lord chancellor, Chris Grayling, Hale explained this would allow parliament to pass laws that were not compatible with the European convention on human rights. That had been the case before the act came into force in 2000. Whether the UK should revert to that position was a political question, she continued. I am quite sure that most of us - probably all of us - would regret it, because the opportunity for us, ourselves, to work out what is, and what is not, compatible with the European convention has brought great benefits to the law and to a great many people. European court of human rights, Strasbourg. Photograph: Johanna Leguerre/AFP It was also of benefit to the human rights court. Strasbourg says to us: 'We are so glad that, when we have a case brought against the UK, mostly we have a fully reasoned judgment from at least one, and usually three, UK courts, explaining to us why UK law is not incompatible with the convention. And that makes it much easier for us to decide the case, usually in your favour.' It was "almost invariably" in the UK's favour, Hale added. Turning to the separate question of whether the UK should pull out of the human rights convention, an option backed by the home secretary, Theresa May, Hale said such a move would "of course" mean leaving European institutions, including the Council of Europe (CoE) and the EU. "So I leave it to the politicians to decide whether that would be a price worth paying for it becoming easier to get rid of certain unpopular foreigners," she said. The CoE is the body that runs the human rights court and enforces its rulings. Observers agree that the UK would have to leave the 47-member body if it were to denounce the CoE's most important treaty. And no country may join the EU unless it has become a member of the CoE. But whether the UK would be allowed to remain in the EU after leaving the CoE has been seen as an open question. I asked Hale to justify her prediction that leaving the convention would require the UK to leave. To remain in the EU, Hale explained, the UK would have to subscribe to the EU's charter of fundamental rights, which included rights similar to those in the European convention. "And the EU is about to accede to the European convention as well," she said. So those factors might make it slightly unlikely that they would allow us to remain in. As a former academic, Hale was clearly at ease answering questions from students. Many wanted to know why she was the only woman to have reached the UK's highest court. Hale said most other countries had "solved the problem." But it was taken for granted in the UK that the only people qualified to become judges in the higher courts were very successful barristers. And only 12% of QCs are women. Too few judges in the UK are women, say critics. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP Judges should also be drawn from other parts of the legal world - presumably solicitors, academics, government lawyers and barristers who were not advocates, said Hale. They might need more training but they could still be tried out, in the same way as other applicants, by being invited to sit as part-time judges. During a lecture last month Hale said appointments to the supreme court should take into account the court's "racial or gender balance." However, critics claim that since no women had been appointed on merit, aiming for a gender balance would mean appointing women who were not as well regarded as the three men who had recently been appointed, something no female candidate would welcome. Hale disagreed: "I simply do not believe that in many higher appointments, of any sort, it is possible to have a clear hierarchy," she said. If you have a dozen applicants for three jobs, to take an obvious example - actually, it was more than that - to say that 'it is clear that X is top and Y is second and Z is third' is all going to depend on what weight you give to particular qualities that they have. The question the selectors needed to ask themselves was: what do we most want? She said: "All I'm suggesting is 'what do we most want?' might include a greater diversity in a lot of respects. But I am not suggesting that anybody should be appointed who can't hack it. We're expecting a very high threshold of ability here. Hale said the supreme court needed "a variety of judges." To much laughter she added: "And I need someone to talk to about shopping with."