Shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti has said the judiciary "needs to be more representative".

The Labour peer said she wanted to see more black, female and working class people in the profession.

Speaking at a fringe event at the party's conference in Brighton, Baroness Chakrabarti said Labour respected the judiciary and the rule of law but it was "a two-way street" that needed further action.

"If the profession and the judiciary is going to maintain the legitimacy and the trust that it rightly deserves, that profession and that judiciary needs to be more representative," she said.

"And I want to see more working class kids, more black kids, more women in the profession, and in more senior parts of the profession."

Abolishing tuition fees would help, she said, adding: "But there's another side to this, which is that we've got be more representative as a judiciary."

Baroness Chakrabarti also said that while it was a positive move Lady Hale had been appointed as the first female president of the Supreme Court, it was "wrong" that she had been the only female justice in the UK's highest court.

By Jon Vale