Employment tribunals: fees
Following the introduction of fees to take a case to the Employment Tribunal, the Government undertook to carry out a review to examine the impact of the new fees on the work of the tribunals. They have now carried out this review and in January 2017 published a Consultation Paper on changes they are suggesting might be made to the fees charging system.
The paper states that the introduction of fees had three principal objectives. These objectives were:
(i) Financial: to transfer a proportion of the costs of the ETs to users (where they
can afford to pay);
(ii) Behavioural: to encourage people to use alternative services to help resolve
their disputes; and
(iii) Justice: to protect access to justice.
It might be suggested that there was a fourth, political, objective namely to ease burdens on employers who were arguing that it was too easy for them to be taken to a tribunal by an employee – an argument which was of course rejected by the TUC and other workers’ representatives.
Having conducted their review, the Government has concluded that its original objectives have broadly been met:
(i) the financial objective:those who use the ETs are contributing around £9 million per annum in fees (which is in line with estimates at the time),transferring a proportion of the cost of the ETs fromtaxpayers to those who use the Employment Tribunals.
(ii)the behavioural objective:while there has been a sharp, significant and sustained fall in ET claims following the introduction of fees, there has been a significant increase in the number of people who have turned to Acas’s conciliation service.There were over 80,000 notificationsto Acas in the first year of the new early conciliation service, and more than 92,000 in 2015/16. This suggests that more people are now using conciliation than were previously using voluntary pre-claim conciliation and the ETs combined.(iii) access to justice:our assessment suggests that conciliation is effective in helping up to a little under half of the people who refer disputes to them (48%) avoid the need to go to the ETs, and where it has not worked, many (up to a further 34%) went on to issue proceedings.
While these conclusions will not satisfy those who argue that there should be a return to the former system, there is absolutely no indication that the present Government is planning to abandon its new fees scheme.
The review states:
The fall in ET claims has been significant and much greater than originally estimated.In many cases, we consider this to be a positive outcome: more people have referred their disputes to Acas’s conciliation service. Nevertheless, there is also some evidence that some people who have been unable to resolve their disputes through conciliation have been discouraged from bringing a formal ET claim because of the requirement to pay a fee.This assessment is reinforced by the consideration given to the particular impact that fees have had on the volumes of workplace discrimination claims, in accordance with the duties under section 149 (1)of the Equality Act 2010.
The Government is proposing that the income threshold for fee remission should be modestly increased to, broadly, the level of the National Living Wage, with additional allowances for couples and children. (This proposal would apply to all courts and tribunal where standards fees are payable.)
The Government has also abolished fees for certain types of case concerning payments from the National Insurance Fund, such as certain redundancy payments.
In addition, the Consultation Paper notes that the Government has taken steps to publicise better the Lord Chancellor’s power to remit fees in exceptional circumstances, which has apparently led to some increase in the numbers of cases where this power has been exercised.
It seems highly unlikely that these changes are going to lead to significant increases in the numbers of claims made in Employment Tribunals. and even the modest changes proposed are not yet settled.
What is potentially more interesting is whether changes that might be made under the Transforming Our Justice System programme which, by holding out the prospect of much greater digitization of process, could lead to more people taking their claims to the ET. But as noted in my earlier blog, significant procedural reform of ETs is not going to be put in place for a considerable time to come.
Details of the proposed changes are at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/review-of-the-introduction-of-fees-in-the-employment-tribunals
Martin Partington: Introduction to the English Legal System 15th ed 2021
Oxford University Press Learning Link Resources
Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System 
Leave a Reply