Lord Sharpe of Epsom

The Employment Rights Bill Impact Assessments were published in October 2024 and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/employment-rights-bill-impact-assessments. This analysis includes an assessment of the potential impact of the day-one right to not be unfairly dismissed on employment tribunal caseloads.

We recognise the Employment Tribunal system needs appropriate resourcing. The Lord Chancellor has a statutory duty to ensure sufficient funding for an efficient and effective Employment Tribunal. This is done via negotiation with the senior judiciary via the Concordat process.

For the financial year 2025/26, the Government has committed funding to support 33,900 sitting days for Employment Tribunals, which is at maximum judicial capacity. Funding for future years will be subject to future Concordat processes.

We are working to ensure that existing spend on Acas, tribunals, and state enforcement is used in an efficient way.

Following the election, this Government has outlined its ambitions through the Plan for Change, which sets out an ambitious set of milestones - across the missions - for this Parliament.

As the House would expect, Government continually reviews its work to ensure that it is delivering the best outcomes for the people of the United Kingdom, and that its policies continue to represent the best value for the taxpayer.

Public reviews will be available on gov.uk as they are published.

The Home Office publishes daily small boat arrival figures in the ‘Small boat activity in the English Channel’ transparency release on gov.uk; however, this includes all small boat arrivals, not just those who have claimed asylum.

The Home Office also publishes statistics on small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK statistics’ release on gov.uk. Data on asylum applications from small boat arrivals, by nationality, sex, and age, is published in table Irr_D02 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’, with the latest data up to the end of June 2024. Data on asylum applications from small boat arrivals for July to September 2024 will be published in November 2024.

We are maintaining investment in the annual recruitment of about 1,000 judges and tribunal members across all jurisdictions. Annual recruitment requirements are determined by business need and judicial departures.

Since July 2024, 50 fee-paid Employment Judges (EJs) have been appointed, whilst 19 salaried EJs were appointed throughout 2024. Recruitment for up to 36 salaried EJs commenced in March 2025 and recruitment for 50 fee-paid EJs will commence in early 2026. As reported in the 2025 Judicial Diversity Statistics, there were 165 salaried and 143 fee-paid EJs in post in England and Wales as of 1 April 2025.

Since July 2024, we have also appointed an additional 6 caseworkers (legal officers) to support Employment Tribunals. There are currently just over 32 FTE legal officers in post.