Fees planned for employment claims

Having breached Magna Carta last time, ministers are now trying again

In July 2017, the Ministry of Justice suffered a historic defeat in the Supreme Court. Seven justices found that the government’s decision to charge claimants fees for bringing claims before employment tribunals “effectively prevents access to justice and is therefore unlawful”.

Two years earlier, the justice secretary Chris Grayling had led national celebrations to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Now, he was found to have breached its best-known surviving principles. So deep was the trauma that it has taken his many successors six-and-a-half years to decide what to do.

Home of the central London employment tribunal. But whose victory?

Defeat in the Supreme Court should not have come as a surprise. Until 2013, no fees had been payable. But Grayling had decided that claimants in all but the simplest cases should pay a total of £1,200 before their claims were heard by an employment tribunal. If they lost and wanted a hearing before the appeal tribunal, they had to find a further £1,600 — quite apart from anything they might have to pay their own lawyers.

There were exceptions for people with little or no money. But these fee remissions were not available if the claimant or the claimant’s partner had £3,000 or more in the bank. And it was not uncommon for someone challenging a redundancy decision to have recently received a payment of that order.

Having lost in court, ministers immediately repealed the unlawful fees order and made costly arrangements to refund all fees that had been paid under it. A year later, the Ministry of Justice still appeared to be reeling from the shock.