Courts and Tribunals Fees — House of Commons, 2016-07-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Jonathan Simon Djanogly (Conservative, Centre-right): Much of the preliminary work on court and tribunal fee reviews was carried out in the early days of the coalition Government, when I had the pleasure of minding those issues at the Ministry of Justice. I acknowledge the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill): the issues are complex and dependent on the differing circumstances. I think, however, there is now a level of understanding that was not generally prevalent back then—first, that it costs money to have, as we do, a decent court service, decent quality courts and an excellent quality of judges; and, secondly, that this cost should not just be for the taxpayer to shoulder We invested £300 million in the state-of-the-art Rolls building to hear large international and money cases. This gave the UK the quality of courts required to retain our premier status as the place to seek justice, using English and Welsh jurisdiction clauses, and thereby added greatly to the offering and income of UK plc. I have to ask, however, whether very high-value cases should be subject to a £10,000 fee cap. The first case to be heard in the Rolls building involved two Russian oligarchs and would have cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds per week in lawyers’ costs but, relatively, peanuts to hire the court and judge. I appreciate concerns that fees should not be so high as to impact on international competiveness, but I would appreciate hearing from the Minister whether he feels that we have the balance right On employment tribunals, the claim figures may be smaller—most of the time—but the principle remains that the service has to be paid for. Given that an employment contract is a private contract that does not involve the state, except when the state is the employer, why should the taxpayer subsidise the private claim? I think we now have the right formula: so far as possible, and as the starting point, the fees paid by the applicant should cover the cost of the application, but following that, where it is in the interests of justice, people who need help should be individually assisted via a remission scheme In that context, I do not agree with the Justice Committee’s suggestion that the overall quantum of fees should be reduced, and I do not believe that its report justifies that in any event, although I accept that the Chairman has just acknowledged that more data are required to make the assessment The figures for employment tribunals are material. There were 67% fewer single cases from October 2013 to June 2015, although that still represents tens of thousands of claims per year. The fall in multiple cases by 72% was more expected, as lots of public sector equal pay claims were working their way through the system. There seems to be some debate, however, about the extent to which fees have put people off claiming, and this will always be a hard figure to tie down. The Committee speculated that it could be 13,000 a year, based on 26% of ACAS claimants saying they would not progress their claim because they found the fees off-putting. Of course, a significant proportion might have believed this, but possibly only or mainly because they had weak claims. We would need more research The debate around employment tribunal fees often focuses on the questions raised by vexatious or highly risky claims and the impact on business and the economy. I shall come back to these important issues, but they did not form the starting point of our initial review, which was, first, to get those who could pay to do so; secondly, to encourage parties to seek alternative methods of dispute resolution, where possible; and, thirdly, to maintain access to justice. I still maintain that those were sound principles on which to proceed, and I think that this has been justified by the very many judicial reviews, brought mainly by the trade unions, that have to date consistently failed I strongly believe that when a claimant could issue a claims form at zero cost to themselves, he or she had every incentive to do so—but, most importantly, every incentive to do whatever the weakness of the claim itself. The Justice Committee report describes a witness who suggested that vexatious claims may be less than 5% of claims, but that still represents a significant number for the unfortunate companies that are subjected to them. Witnesses also stated that fees had deterred claimants who would otherwise have won as the proportion of successful claimants has not increased, despite a fall in the number of cases.