WOULD-be magistrates should be obliged to declare membership of a Masonic lodge, the magistracy's policy-making body has decided.

The Council of the Magistrates' Association, which represents the vast bulk of the 30,000 magistrates in England and Wales, wants candidates for the lay magistracy to declare it if they are Freemasons.

And magistrates who become Masons after joining the bench should also be required to inform their local committees.

The Council's proposals, which have gone to the Lord Chancellor's Department for consideration, emerged during a House of Commons Home Affairs select committee which is investigating the influence of Freemasonry on the police and the judiciary.

Council chairman Anne Fuller told the committee that the objective of the proposals was to ensure that magistrates' benches broadly reflected the make-up of the local community and that no single group was over-represented.

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