Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for Tribunal cases to be heard for (a) Social Security and Child Support, (b) Immigration and Asylum and (c) SEN appeals.

We are working to reduce the outstanding caseload in the Social Entitlement Chamber, the Immigration and Asylum Chamber and the Health, Education and Social Care Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. Reducing outstanding caseloads is the key measure to bringing down the waiting times for tribunal hearings.

HMCTS continues to invest in improving tribunal productivity through the recruitment of additional Judges, deployment of Legal Officers to actively manage cases, the development of modern case management systems and the use of remote hearing technology as appropriate. If an expedited hearing is requested, a Judge or Legal Officer will make a decision on that issue, taking all the circumstances into account.

The Ministry of Justice has recently undertaken a comprehensive review of civil legal aid and, having considered the evidence collected, we acknowledge that the sector is facing a number of challenges. We are committed to improving the experience of users and providers and, as an important first step towards this, we intend to consult on uplifts to housing and immigration legal aid fees in January 2025.

This Government wants a justice system that is effective, efficient, and sustainable, and this funding boost is an important step towards that.

Data on Tribunals performance is published by the Ministry of Justice on a quarterly basis. Receipts, disposals and the outstanding caseload for individual Chambers in the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal, the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal can be found at the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.