Employment tribunal fees are barring access to justice and must be reduced, say MPs

MPs have called for employment tribunal fees to be “substantially” reduced after it was found that such fees have badly reduced the public’s access to justice since they were introduced.

The House of Commons Justice committee, a cross-party group of MPs, has produced a report calling on the government to reduce the fees that people must now pay in order to take their claims to an employment tribunal. The punitive fees mean that many meritorious and genuine claims have been unable to progress. As the Law Society Gazette reports, the MPs have demanded an increased in the threshold for fees to be waived and for women’s claims of discrimination over maternity leave and/or pregnancy to be taken more seriously. They also criticised the “tardiness” of ministers at the Ministry of Justice, who have still not published a review into the effects of employment tribunal fees six months after it was due.

The MPs have also said that tribunal fees were introduced on the back of flimsy research and evidence, supporting the view that the government has pushed through these measures for financial reasons and to create an advantage for the wealthy business owners and employers who make up a large proportion of the Conservative Party’s donors and lobbyists by discouraging claims against them, with scant regard for access to justice.  

The report also called for the increase to the divorce petition fee, which now stands at £550, to be rescinded, while it said that the doubling of immigration and asylum fees has caused “considerable concern and could deny vulnerable people justice”.

Bob Neill MP, Conservative member for Bromley & Chislehurst and chair of the committee, said: “Where there is conflict between the objectives of achieving full cost recovery and preserving access to justice, the latter must prevail.”

Jonathan Smithers, president of the Law Society, commented: “The Law Society and the solicitors’ profession have raised repeated concerns, in written submissions and oral evidence, now echoed by the Justice Select Committee, that punitive courts and tribunals fee increases are denying citizens and businesses the right to justice. The government must now heed the views of experts from across and beyond the legal profession. We welcome and reiterate the committee’s unequivocal declaration that access to justice must prevail over generating revenue when the government is setting court and tribunal fees.”