Employment: Tribunals

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the ability of individuals who have been dismissed to invoke their employment rights when they cannot afford tribunal costs.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

On 11 June, we announced the start of the post-implementation review of the introduction of fees in the employment tribunal. The review will consider how successful the policy has been in achieving its original objectives, which included maintaining access to justice for those seeking to bring disputes to the tribunal. Our intention is to complete the review later this year.

[Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)]

My Lords, is the noble Baroness not aware that for many people, losing their job is an absolute disaster? There is also a feeling of grievance. Those feelings can be assuaged if people have access to a tribunal. In fact, to get to a tribunal they must make a quite large payment of £1,000. Why should they have to do that? Where is the justice in it? It is about time we had a revision of these procedures. They are most unfair to many people.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I know that the noble Baroness has raised this issue on many occasions. I hope I can reassure her that the very purpose of this review is to ensure that the original objective of maintaining access to justice for everyone has been achieved. Of course she is right that there has been an implementation of fees, but we also introduced other reforms that have had an impact. For instance, early mandatory conciliation helps to divert people from going through acrimonious hearings. That must surely be a better approach. In its first nine months, more than 60,000 people accessed this scheme. We are very clear that of course people must maintain and have access to justice, but there are other, better ways for employees with legitimate claims to try and resolve their disputes outside a tribunal if they can.