Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.
You’ve been dismissed – unfairly you believe. Unemployment
is at a 17 year high. If you can find a job and get an interview, how long
before you’re asked why you left your last job?
There must be a remedy – this is the UK. We’ve led the world
in delivering justice and are still, in recession, building (expensive)
facilities to make London the forum of choice for those who can afford it.
And for those who can’t, who live here, who have been sacked
perhaps unfairly (contrary to the law as it still is presently)?
Yes, of course you have the Employment Tribunal – you know,
that forum specially created for employment disputes, accessible to all, relatively
speedy, fee free.
Of course, it costs money to run. That cost inevitably rises
as volumes of business increase.
The political reaction to that seems an irritable one. The
focus is on unmeritorious claims. The proposal to charge what will be to many
people prohibitive fees is not an exercise in self-funding, but simply turning
the tap.
It’s right that the facility – for justice – should not be
clogged by speculative claims and vexatious parties but raising the bar
indiscriminately is not the way to eliminate them.
Costs sanctions are.
It’s been said that the machinery is already there to strike
out weak cases, either way, or dispense costs warnings but the problem is that
the powers are too rarely deployed. Judges simply won’t go there.
I’ve had at least three pre-hearing reviews in the last year
where one (the other!) party’s case was roundly condemned but allowed to
continue. In another instance a judge refused even to list a one hour
application to strike out a claim that was listed for a day of what turned out,
unsurprisingly, to be one-way traffic start to finish.
Most advisers will tell you that costs orders just don’t
happen. I was told so very firmly by my last opponent to such an application
four months ago - a couple of hours before his client was ordered to pay £5,000
for his unreasonable defence of the claim.
That was my third ET costs order in as many years but
generally they’re right. Employment judges don’t use the powers they have to
arrest and deter waste of resource.
But that’s where the just answer lies – not in the wholesale
denial of justice to all, including those who need and deserve it.
