Recommendation 24

HM Government Accepted

The Government recognises the importance that effective and swift resolution of employment disputes plays in protecting the rights of workers and has introduced a number of measures in the Employment Tribunal to help address outstanding caseload, maximise capacity and efficiency and help respond to growing demand. The Ministry of Justice has maximised judicial capacity by deploying legal caseworkers to handle non- contentious administrative case management work. It has recently recruited up to 35 new salaried judges in the Employment Tribunal in addition to the 19 new salaried and 114 fee- paid judges appointed in 21/22. MoJ has maximised the capacity of existing courtrooms by making our estate Covid-secure for hearings that cannot be dealt with virtually, deployed our Cloud Video Platform and recruited additional video hearing administrator staff to ensure we can hear as many cases remotely as possible. The judiciary have established a ‘Virtual Region’ of fee-paid judges to hear cases in any region, which has already delivered 1,900 sitting days and heard over 1,000 cases by December 2022. As a result of these measures, the Employment Tribunals have now succeeded in returning to pre-Covid levels of hearings. However, we recognise that significant challenges remain. The Government is working on further measures to increase capacity, reduce demand and improve the efficiency of the whole employment dispute system. Measures introduced to date have focused on increasing mediation capacity, establishing a specialist team of conciliators to deal with the most complex cases, and improving our early education offer for businesses. The Government will take a whole system approach to addressing the outstanding caseload in the Employment Tribunal. One example is a recent project led jointly by MoJ and DBT funded by the Shared Outcome Fund and delivered by Acas. It has looked at ways in which early interventions can improve the service offered to customers by Acas, to resolve employment disputes more quickly and effectively. Evaluation of the work is 20 Post-pandemic economic growth: UK labour markets: Government Response ongoing; however, early indications are positive, with users feeling more informed and more cases being resolved without the need for them to progress into the Employment Tribunal Services. The funding award has enabled: • The development of a new content strategy, which helps those using Early Conciliation claimants to better understand the process; • The creation of a new notification form: this supports users in providing the information needed to allow Acas to act quickly and maximise the time available to see if a resolution is possible; • The deployment of automated allocation using data from the new form, which allows the user (or their representative) to be matched with a conciliator in a matter of minutes; and • Changes to the large group claims strategy, which means that users who are from the same workplace are assigned to the same conciliator. A further system-wide change involves the Judicial Review and Courts Act, which will transfer Employment Tribunal rule-making powers to the Tribunal Procedures Committee, an independent, judge-led committee. This will help the Tribunal to respond more swiftly and flexibly to the challenges it faces through operational changes and rulemaking. It will also allow the judiciary to manage their workloads more flexibly and help maximise the capacity of the Employment Tribunal. The Government also recognise the vital role that effective enforcement plays in giving individuals the confidence to challenge employers where they are denied their rights and it creates a level playing field between businesses. An individual’s employment right to take their employer to a Tribunal remains an individual right and thus it is their right to enforce in a manner that best suits their individual need(s). Successful claimants are signposted to the High Court Enforcement Fast Track Scheme which allows High Court Enforcement Officers to apply for and seek to execute writs of control on behalf of the successful claimant. The scheme is widely used by claimants.