An experienced British judge has decided to step down from Hong Kong’s top court next month, citing uncertainties under the city’s national security law, the Times of London has reported.

Madam Justice Brenda Hale, 76, took up the role of non-permanent judge of Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in 2018.

“The jury is out on how they will be able to operate the new national security law. There are all sorts of question marks up in the air,” the Times reported her as saying.

Hale confirmed the resignation at an online forum on Thursday, in which she said that her term as an overseas judge for Hong Kong would end in July, the newspaper reported.

The Hong Kong authorities were expected to offer her another stint, the report said, and quoted her as saying that she did not wish to be reappointed. In the present circumstances, she could not foresee a time when she would fly to Hong Kong, the report added.

According to the report, Hale acknowledged ongoing serious concerns about the national security law, and noted that the remaining foreign judges were “keeping an eye on what’s going on there.” There will be nine British judges on the Hong Kong court after she leaves.

Hale’s decision came after Australian judge James Spigelman resigned as a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal in September last year, two years ahead of the end of his tenure and following Beijing’s passage of the national security law for Hong Kong that summer.

Apple Daily is trying to reach Hale for comment.

Earlier, the Times published an editorial that urged all British judges who were sitting on Hong Kong’s court to quit in protest at Beijing’s crackdown on the city and to support the restoration of the city’s judiciary independence.

Beijing authorities were attempting to keep certain British judges in Hong Kong to provide “a welcome gloss of legitimacy” in order to maintain the city’s image of an international financial center, the editorial said.

Hale was appointed in 2004 as the first and only female Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in the United Kingdom, the Court of Final Appeal said on its website. On the establishment of the U.K. Supreme Court in 2009, she became a justice of the Supreme Court, then deputy president in 2013 and president in 2017. She retired from the Supreme Court post in January 2020.

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