Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the target for collection of employment tribunal fees was in each quarter since the introduction of such fees; what sum was collected in such fees; what the costs of such collection were; what value in such fees was waived under remission; what the cost of setting up the remission scheme was; and what overall net sum was received in such fees.

There has not been a target for the collection of employment tribunal fees since the introduction of such fees. The impact assessment for the introduction of fees estimated that £10m of fee income would be generated annually. With new claim volumes reducing in 2013/14, HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) estimates fee income will be approximately £9m in 2014/15.

The fee income collected in each quarter since July 2013 is:

It is not possible to separate out many costs of collection from the wider costs of employment tribunals, which have fallen in 2013/14 and 2014/15. The estimated running and support costs for administering the fee collection process in Employment Tribunals are shown below:

¹In practice staff costs in 2013/14 would have been incurred before quarter 4 with the figures shown representing costs recorded to the relevant cost centres for the fee collection teams. All IT costs in 2013/14 are included in the set up costs described below.

It is not possible to disaggregate the cost of establishing new (and revising existing) IT systems to handle remission applications in the employment tribunals system, from that work in relation to the systems for collecting fees. The figure provided below is a combined total.

The capital investment made by HMCTS in respect of IT systems to support the collection of fee receipts and remission applications across the employment tribunals system was £4.4m. A further £0.6m resource was spent on the project to implement fees giving a total £5.0m project cost.

HMCTS estimates that £8.9m of fee income was collected from July 2013 to the end of June 2014. The full cost of operating the employment tribunals for 2013/14 was £76.3m gross expenditure and £71.8m net of fee income, a reduction of £14.9m from the £86.7m full cost of operating the employment tribunals for the year 2012 /13.

The sum collected in relation to employment tribunal fees for the period 2013-2014 is available from financial information relating to fees and charges, published by HMCTS in its Annual Report and Accounts. The HMCTS Annual Report and Accounts for 2013-14 was published in June 2014 on the Ministry of Justice website and can be found at: http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/corporate-reports/hmcts.

For the period from April 2014 to 30 November 2014 HMCTS has received a gross total of £5.8m in employment tribunal fees of which £1.4m has been forgone in fee remission, leaving £4.4m in net fees.

I expect to be in a position to publish more detailed data on the number of remission applications made, and awards made, for the employment tribunals and Employment Appeal Tribunal in the Tribunal and Gender Recognition Certificate Statistics quarterly bulletin by the end of this financial year.