Courts and Tribunals Fees

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to respond for the Opposition. I am following in the footsteps of a very learned gentleman: Baron Falconer of Thoroton. In terms of my legal career, I am not quite so learned. Before I was elected to represent my constituents, I was a lawyer for 10 years in my home city of Leeds. In eight years as an employment lawyer, I saw—like my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders)—many changes to employment law. As an employment lawyer, I was angry at what the introduction of employment tribunal fees in 2011 did to access to justice. Today, I am here at the Dispatch Box to speak up for all those whose access to justice has been deliberately obstructed by this Government and the coalition Government who preceded them.

I want to share with hon. Members my memory of the first time I lodged an employment tribunal claim after the introduction of employment tribunal fees in 2011. I was shocked and saddened to see the following words appear on the computer screen: “Customer, please enter your credit card details”. That made me sick to my stomach. Are we saying that people attempting to assert their statutory rights, such as the statutory right to be paid the national minimum wage and the statutory right not to be discriminated against at work on grounds of gender, sexuality, religious belief or disability, are reduced to being consumers or customers?

[Mr Djanogly]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

I will not be giving way because there is limited time and I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to answer.

Are we saying that these people are reduced to being customers? In fact, they should be viewed as citizens trying to assert their statutory rights and to seek justice. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) is annoyed, but not as annoyed as many across the country who have seen their access to justice so unnecessarily restricted.

The Select Committee’s report, which I commend, recommends that

“the overall quantum of fees charged for bringing cases to employment tribunals should be substantially reduced”

and that

“the Ministry…should introduce a system for regular rerating of remission thresholds to take account of inflation”.

I think, as do plenty of people outside this place, that we need to go further than that, but the report is nevertheless to be commended.

We have heard excellent contributions to this debate from hon. Members on both sides of the House. I particularly welcome the opening speech by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who is Chair of the Justice Committee, which, as he explained, unanimously supported the report’s recommendations. In response to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), we do recognise the concerns of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.

How can it be disputed, after what we have heard today, that access to justice has been harmed, not helped, by this Government and their coalition predecessor? Many of us know of this from our own experience as MPs, with our constituency advice sessions overflowing with people who do not know where to turn when they cannot access or afford legal advice or legal representation. Legal aid has been attacked, employment tribunal fees have been introduced, and fees are being increased in divorce proceedings and in immigration and asylum cases. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) explained, these fees risk dissuading people from litigating at all, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) indicated, they have a discriminatory impact.

The Select Committee is right to be concerned about the effect of court and tribunal fees on women in particular. The increase in the divorce petition fee from £410 to £500 disproportionally hits women, who are the vast majority of divorce petitioners. Why should the Government be increasing what could be termed a “divorce tax” on people, including women, who have suffered domestic violence or emotional abuse? Why are the Government charging more for a divorce petition than it costs to process it? Should the state really be making money from people’s misery? What have people bringing cases in the immigration and asylum chambers done to deserve a proposed 600% increase in fees? This is an attack on some of our society’s most vulnerable people—those seeking asylum. As we heard here last week, this takes place against a backdrop of growing attacks on people who are perceived to be migrants.

Let me turn to the Select Committee’s concerns about employment tribunal fees. The report quotes from the Odysseus Trust, which describes tribunal fees as

“a tax on justice imposed to enable HM Treasury to profit from people seeking to enforce their legal rights”.

The same paragraph quotes the organisation, Working Families, which says that

“these fees imperil the rule of law.”

That is also the view of legal experts. The Select Committee heard from Jonathan Smithers, the president of the Law Society, who said that there was the possibility of

“a two-tier justice system for the rich and the poor”

and that any increase in fees will militate for that rather than against it. Chantal-Aimée Doerries, chair of the Bar Council, said:

“Our members who practise in the employment tribunals have very much formed the conclusion that the challenge at the moment is the level of fees in terms of access.”

The Select Committee concluded, and I hope that the whole House weighs these words very carefully:

“Where there is conflict between the objectives of achieving cost-recovery and preserving access to justice, the latter objective must prevail.”

I could not agree more.

Employment tribunal fees have cut access to justice. As we have heard, there has been a 70% or so reduction in employment tribunal cases being brought. Cases on unauthorised deductions from wages are down by 56%. Cases on unfair dismissal are down by 72%. Cases on equal pay are down by 58%. Cases on sex discrimination are down by 68%, and cases on race discrimination are down by 60%. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) observed so effectively, is anybody seriously arguing that this drop in the number of claims being brought means that there has been a sudden damascene conversion of all the employers in the country and that bad treatment has been abolished and consigned to the history books? Of course not; it is just that claims are not being brought. We must remember the deterrent factor. Employment tribunal claims do not just help those who bring them; they also help those who would never dream of doing so. The possibility of the claim being brought acts as a deterrent against employers engaging in bad and discriminatory behaviour.

The true nature of the remission system must be discussed. I remember, when I was an employment lawyer, helping people to fill in the remission fees forms and watching them do so, with the amount of humiliating detail they are expected to go into in providing so many bank statements and all their other details. I remember getting documents back from the employment tribunals service where people had highlighted in yellow on someone’s bank statement the fact that they had had £12 transferred into their bank account by a relative and asked them to explain what this money was for, where it had come from, and why. Unison is correct to say that the remission system is not working. Unison argues that the equality impact assessment of July 2012, before the introduction of fees, said that it was expected that 23.9% of claimants would benefit from full remission and 53% of claimants would benefit from the variable discounts on fee rates up to £950, but the actual figures suggest that only 3.87% of claimants benefit from any remission. That is shocking.

With these statistics in mind, I welcome the Select Committee’s criticism of the Ministry for failing to publish the review on the impact of employment tribunal fees. The Select Committee said:

“On the basis of…evidence to us on 9 February, we assumed that the review would be published shortly”.

It also said:

“We have not appreciated being strung along in this fashion”,

and that it is “unacceptable” that it remains unpublished six months later. Who would not agree with that when ordinary people continue to miss out on justice? It is therefore welcome that as well as the pressure brought to bear by the Select Committee’s report we continue to see a legal challenge to employment tribunal fees by the trade union Unison, which has now taken its case to the Supreme Court, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) mentioned.

I would like to say more, but I wish to give the Minister an opportunity to address some of the concerns that I and others have outlined today. I reiterate my support for the Select Committee’s request that the Government publish their review on the impact of tribunal fees and reconsider their approach of treating court users as customers.

Sir Hartley Shawcross, who was Attorney General from 1945 to 1951, when we had a fantastic Government who changed things for the better, said about the Legal Aid and Advice Bill in 1948:

“It is a Bill which will open the doors of the courts freely to all persons who may wish to avail themselves of British justice without regard to the question of their wealth or ability to pay…indeed, going back further to the time when Magna Charta decreed that: ‘To no one will we sell, deny, or delay right or justice.’—it is an interesting historical reflection that our legal system, admirable though it is, has always been in many respects open to, and it has received, grave criticisms on account of the fact that its benefits were only fully available to those who had purses sufficiently long to pay for them.”—[Official Report, 15 December 1948; Vol. 459, c. 1221.]

Nobody could put it better or advocate those principles more effectively, but regrettably they are up for debate again.

This is an estimates day debate. I can make it clear now, with no ifs or buts, that a Labour Government, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) as Prime Minister, will abolish employment tribunal fees and pursue the principle of access to justice for all. The usual convention is not to vote on estimates day. However, such is the strength of feeling in the parliamentary Labour party that we will vote against this motion on a point of principle.