I am delighted to welcome Judge Brian Doyle, President of the Employment Tribunals (England & Wales) to our pages this month. Although it is not unheard of for a senior member of the judiciary to make a public statement on policy as opposed to legal matters, it is still comparatively rare. Judge Doyle corrects some misapprehensions about proposals and ideas that have been floated and puts the case for the reform of employment tribunals to be discussed. As he says, the debate starts here.

It is a debate that we as employment lawyers need to engage with and contribute to. In part, this is because employment tribunals are not what they once were. There is a risk that our part of the system gets lost or crowded out. We might think that employment tribunals are oh so important, but that may not be a universally held view. The latest set of figures published in respect of all tribunals shows how small we have become in the current system. In the period January to March 2016, a total of 4,200 ‘single’ claims were received (down 1% on the same quarter in 2015).

In the same period, the First-tier Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber had 17,300 receipts (and that was down by 29% compared to 2015); and the Social Security and Child Support tribunal received 41,200 appeals (up 14%) during the same period.

Of course, the claims received by employment tribunals may be more complex and more involved than for other areas. The pool of people who can make a claim is also considerably larger (people in or attempting to get in to work relationships, compared to those making social security claims or seeking to remain in the UK). Before the introduction of employment tribunal fees in 2013, one would have expected the figure for claims receipts to be around 15,000 for the quarter.

We also have experience of what works and what does not; and that needs to be heard in any debate that says it is about reform. I raised the issue two months ago about what the drive for reform stemmed from as it did not appear (to me at least) to be from a need or desire to improve the quality of decisions made; do better justice; or address an unacceptably low standard of service (justice delayed is justice denied, etc).

I am not sure that I am clearer now, other than I accept that if a reform programme is underway that affects what I do, then I ought to engage with it. Some clarity on what is trying to be achieved in this wider reform programme is essential if we are to be carried along and ‘engaged with’ as well as be ‘engaged in’.

All of which brings me – again – to the subject of employment tribunal fees. Since fees were introduced, the number of claims has dropped by more than 70% – and they have remained at that level for nearly three years. There is a strong suspicion that the fees were set too high and have acted as a barrier to people accessing justice, and there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence to suggest this is the case.

This is not a political position – ELA is non-political after all – but an observation about how the system may work in practice for those it was set up to serve. Clearly, if people are given rights that they cannot enforce, we would all agree there is something wrong with the system. It is a question of degree perhaps, rather than principle, at least for this association.

The Government could go some way towards addressing these concerns by publishing its review of fees, which has been sitting on the minister’s desk since at least October 2015. This debate started some time ago and we do want to engage.

Alex Lock, DAC Beachcroft LLP