To think this is unfair, unjust, pernicious and downright nasty.

[Fifilosttheplot]

As of Monday, the Government are changing the rules on bringing claims in employment tribunals. If you want to bring a claim it will cost you £250 just file the claim and then a further £950 to get it to a hearing, if it gets that far. The idea is that it will stop spurious claims, my argument is, by all means charge to stop spurious claims (the solicitors will stop most no hopers at the first hurdle anyway), but make it £50-£100 not £1200.

This effectively means pretty much anyone on a modest wage will not be able to afford the fees and their rights will just have gone out of the window. There will be some fees remission for people on benefits and low income but, only if your total household income does not exceed between £18,000 and £23,000 gross, yes folks, thats gross, pay.

We have already seen the qualifying period for employment rights moved from 1 year to 2 (which in fairness will help small businesses). However, these reforms effectively exclude anyone with a modest income from bringing a claim. What household in the country has £950 down the back of the sofa when one wage earner is out of work?

So, this opens the door to employers summarily deducting wages, sacking people without notice, bullying, unfairly dismissing, discriminating and maybe even a bit of sexual harrasment thrown in. Unless you can afford to pay £1200 in court fees (or qualify for the remission), there will be absolutely nothing you can do about it.

In September, we also get another pernicious piece of legislation which allows employers to offer shares in the company in return for the employee waiving their rights to unfair dismissal claims, redundancy pay and flexible working. The shares in the company are not voting shares and have no powers attached to them so are largely worthless. You can just imagine the conversation now "That's the terms, do you want the job or not".

These particular pieces of nastiness have been brought in because Adrian Beecroft wrote a report for the government saying the system needed to be balanced towards employers. This is the same man who owns Wonga.com and the same man who was taken to a tribunal by one of his employees when they had been treated appalingly. Oh yes, and this is the same man who made a very large donation to the Conservative Party shortly before being asked to write his report.

All this is nasty, mendacious and it absolutely stinks...rant over

[StealthPolarBear]

" unfair dismissal, whistleblowing, equal pay, discrimination and the like"

that seems to cover a lot of the sorts of things I was thinking of that would lead to employment tribunal. What sorts of things would come under Type A?

[StealthPolarBear]

flatpack would it help if we asked MNHQ to go through and amend all the amounts? Would that appease you? I think the OP would still stand and we could all discuss it instead of bickering about which amount the OP chose.

[arabesque]

Flatpack you seem determined to derail this argument for some reason.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Its not the increase in tribunal costs that scares me. Its the ability of employers to offer employees shares if they waive a pile of workplace rights.

Presumably this will not be offered as an option, its just that inevitably all employees will end op giving up these rights in exchange for worthless shares if they want a job.

It is scary watching the Conservatives dismantle so many things that were so hard fought for; the NHS, education, workers rights...

[Fifilosttheplot]

Unlucky - I admit there are some truly dreadful employees out there and I think extending the qualifying period from 1 year to 2 should help employers weed out the bad ones and bring a bit more balance.

There are also some truly dreadful employers out there who treat workers appalingly and take no heed of the law - unfortunately, a lot of the time these are the employers who are employing people on minimum wage.

I think there should be some investment in a case but not at this level. As I said, £50-£100 would be more sensible perhaps.

[TheSurgeonsMate]

In my experience, this is an area where solicitors do not weed out the obviously spurious claims, as many people choose to represent themselves in the tribunal setting, as is appropriate.

If this makes people think about whether they have a claim, rather than just lodging something because it seems to be worth a spin, then that should help. I do tend to agree that the sums settled on are high, though.

[Fifilosttheplot]

Stealth At the moment (from for T435 on MOJconnect.justice.gov.uk)

Type A

Unfair deduction from earnings,
Payment in lieu of notice,
Redundancy payments
Your employer refusing you time off to go to ante-natal classes

Type B

Unfair dismissal
Equal pay
Discrimination
Whistleblowing

[Fifilosttheplot]

"Form T435 not for"

[Tiggles]

Having been through an employment tribunal for sexual discrimination on trying to return to work after having DS1. It was bad enough having threatening emails from the company that it was going to cost me £1000s of pounds to cover their legal fees, without having additional costs to start with.
In my case I can confirm that it was not the case that the 'company sacked a good worker' but they were struggling financially. They made several other people redundant whilst I was on maternity leave, and sacked a worker for no reason (he also won a tribunal claim). Then made it very hard for me to come back. Their defence was that they 'had assumed I would not return to work after having a baby' yes the male owner of the company had not allowed his wife to return to work until her children had gone to university. They just hoped to not have to pay for a redundancy package.

[LessMissAbs]

flatpack

I'm not wasting time answering your first "question" because it is all about you, and self-serving. I have no idea who you are, what your motivations or, or what your point even is. But I do suspect you have a bit of a tendency to try and tell people what they should think about things. Which is fine when you are cleverer than them...

Which brings us to:

Do you think that 'unfair' and 'nasty' are good ways to debate legislative change?

Since I didn't use those words I don't see why I should answer that. You are trying to be manipulative rather than arguing the debate.

The alternative is to shut people up because they do not observe some esoteric standard of debate, self imposed by...you.

Do you think that complaining that the justice secretary doesn't have a law degree is a valuable contribution and advances the debate?

Absolutely I do. It is very relevant indeed. I didn't actually say that he had to have a law degree, I simply pointed out that his qualifications, when taken together with his experience, were disappointing. He has produced ill thought out changes quite possibly as a result of failing to understand the nuances of the way the legal system operates and long term effects and has in all likliehood simply done what his political masters have encouraged him to do.

Do you really believe that people who are better qualified than him are stupid enough to believe that he has somehow acquired some type of legal knowledge in two years that sets him ahead of all the lawyers in the country, including academic lawyers such as myself, who have no vested interest in earning fees from employment law cases? j

If that were the case, we would certainly have seen this important change in the law debated before Parliament as primary legislation, and perhaps have seen a better form of it passed, with appropriate amendments as necessary.

[LessMissAbs]

LittleMissGreen you describe the sort of claim that is very difficult - the sexual discrimination/maternity return to work disguised as redundancy. When I was in private practice, I was actually told not to take such claims because they were too difficult. Admittedly we were not employment law specialists, nor did we do legal aid.

[K8Middleton]

Yanbu. Anything that further erodes employment rights is very bad news.

I think there issues with the current tribunal process but flat fees will only punish the poorest and give licence to dodgy employers to exploit up to a certain level because costs are usually not recoverable at an employment tribunal ie if your claim is less than the fee why bother bringing it?

[LadyClariceCannockMonty]

Excuse my ignorance about the political/democratic process here, but could someone tell me if it's worth writing to my MP/Chris Grayling/anyone else about? I'd very much like to, if I thought it might at least get looked at. Thanks.

[Thereonthestair]

First there is still a chance that fees will be repaid. there are two judicial reviews ongoing, on in England and one if Scotland. The government have confirmed that if they lose the judicial review they will repay the fees.

Secondly most claimants who I advise will still claim, they will just pass the costs over to the employer in any settlement. If that encourages more settlements when the claim should be settled so much the better. That is not to say that there should be fees. I am pretty neutral about that actually because i do think that they will get added to settlements/awards if people win, but the tribunals are not free. It costs to bring almost all other claims in England, apart from small claims. There is no more money for the courts from taxes so where are court staff being paid from. If we would pay enough tax for legal representation and justice I still wouldn't start with employment cases. I'd start with crime then family cases. In relaity there hasn't been legal help for employment for a long while.

Finally the employment rights for shares is a red herring. Yes those contracts can be offered, but you have to take legal advice on the offer before it can be accepted. That legal advice will almost always be don't take it.

[Fifilosttheplot]

To back up MissAbs point about these reforms being ill thought out, lets use the example of an unfair deduction from wages (type A) claim. If we had for example a claim for £350 wages which had been unfairly deducted

To issue the claim it it would cost £160 issue fee and £230 hearing fee so a total of £390 to recover that amount.

If you wanted to pursue a claim for £350 (on a contract not related to employment) in the small claims court it would cost you £35 issue fee and £55 hearing fee which is far more proportionate and there is no evidence that fees at this level lead to vexatious claims.

Unfortunately, you cant pursue a deduction from wages claim in the small claims court.

It just makes a mockery of the system to have such high fees for employment cases

[TolliverGroat]

A type B claim would be for a complex claim such as unfair dismissal, whistleblowing, equal pay, discrimination and the like

So the sort of claims (equal pay and discrimination) that will (I accept that I am assuming here and don't have actual figures to hand) disproportionately be brought by women, who make up Mumsnet's core user group? It's not overly alarmist to be focusing on those cases, I think; the rights to receive equal pay and to avoid sexual discrimination have been hard-fought-for by generations of women and the addition of a caveat of "as long as you can afford to pay for it" is very significant.

[K8Middleton]

But you could probably bring a breach if contract claim in the county court and argue the loss fifi.

It does make things more complicated for a process that is supposed to be easy enough for a lay person to navigate.

[K8Middleton]

Breach of contract. Stupid autocorrect! It also keeps trying to change yanbu to hamburger

[Dackyduddles]

Op this is the first time in 3yrs I have ever whole heartedly agreed with any op I've ever read.

The Tories have done some monstrous things to employment law since taking over. I'm very disappointed in them for this.

[Thereonthestair]

I agree with K8. And if this was the only claim you had you would be better off in the small claims court with a breach of contract claim. I also agree it makes it harder to navigate and also means people like me will forum shop more and chose courts depending on the fee regime

[Fifilosttheplot]

Thereonthestair - Yes I think one of the oral hearings for judicial review will be heard on Monday.

Yes I agree that costs will innevitably get added on to settlements, the issue is that people who have been put out of a job or are on a low wage wont be able to afford the up front fees to launch their claim.

On the issue of employee shares, I think the conversation might be -

Employer: Here is your contract for signature, it gives you shares in the company in return for waiving a lot of you employment rights. you have to take legal advice

Employee: OK, I really need this job

Lawyer: Dont sign that contract it wouldnt be a good move

Employee: My legal advice was not to sign the contract offering shares in return for my rights

Employer: Do you want the job or not?

[Fifilosttheplot]

K8 There - Theoretcially you can go forum shopping as it is a breach of contract but equally a District Judge might say that it is not the correct forum because your claim is being brought under the Employment Rights Act not common law contract. you are then £90 down and have to start all over again.

We might see some Judges bending the rules as a result of these charges

[mrscog]

Presumably this makes a market though for solicitors to cover these initial fees via conditional fee agreements so if someone poor does have a genuine claim then they'll still be able to go to a tribunal?