Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the average length of proceedings in cases of unfair dismissal being heard by employment tribunals in each of the past five years.

HMCTS does not hold separate data on the number of wrongful dismissal claims.

The quarterly average length of proceedings for unfair dismissal claims can be found in the published statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tribunal-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2021.

These are only available until April 2021. Publication of Employment Tribunal timeliness information ceased from April 2021 when the jurisdiction moved to an interim database with limited management information. Employment Tribunals are now in the process of transitioning to a new case management system and work is in hand as part of the HMCTS data strategy to reintroduce the publication of timeliness information at the end of this calendar year.

Several measures have been taken to reduce the average waiting time for a first hearing in Employment Tribunals including the recruitment of additional judges. To address growing demand, the government invested £2.85 million in December 2022 to allow up to 1,700 more cases to come before judges by the end of March 2023. We also created a virtual region of fee-paid judges to hear remote cases from any region.

Additionally, the Judicial Review and Courts Act transfers Employment Tribunal rule-making powers to the Tribunal Procedures Committee. This independent, judge-led committee will allow the Tribunal to respond more swiftly and flexibly to the challenges it faces through operational changes and rulemaking. This measure will also allow the judiciary to manage their workloads more flexibly, maximising the capacity of the Employment Tribunal