Employment Bill [HL]

I listened with great interest to the introduction of this amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn. Indeed, I have listened to him many times over many years of legislation on this subject. I agree with him about the importance of the equal status of members. I sat on the employers’ side of a tribunal for more than 20 years from 1974. On the whole, everyone took an open view and considered themselves to be equal. However, when it came to a legal point, we always deferred to the chairman, because he was expert in the letter of the law. I am sure that it applied on both sides, but I clearly remember a particular case in which, before we had started, the man on the trade union side asked, ““How can they do this? This man has been employed for 40 years by this company””. We were all a bit sympathetic, but after we had heard the case, even the trade union man asked, ““How could anyone have stuck this man for 40 years?””. They had moved him from job to job within the enterprise in the hope of pacifying him, but nothing would satisfy him. He was really pretty useless in his job. Not all of us automatically had an open mind at the beginning, but after one listened to the evidence, one considered the case very fairly and we were much more open-minded at that point. I was always opposed to the introduction of age discrimination simply because the tribunals will be jammed full of age discrimination cases because people over a certain age have nothing else to fill their time and will find it is a great opportunity to bring a case. I have always been concerned about the logistics of how one would handle age discrimination cases but perhaps the limitations on it will be sufficient protection. The name ““employment tribunal”” came in in 2003. I was never known as a wing member—I was always a lay member—but I would not mind what I was called; it was the fact that I was there that was valuable. I do not think that we should close our minds entirely to cases being heard by a chairman on his own; there should perhaps be an assessment procedure by a three-member panel for cases that would be suitable to be heard by a chairman on his own. If there are more and more cases, as there seem to be—there is a huge pileup of cases—some practical thought has to be given to this. When the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, mentioned the list on page 3 that has to be complied with, that brought me to the point about a consolidation Act. Anyone handling employment law at the moment is under terrible strain, referring from one Act to another and there is much confusion. It is important for the Government to consider a consolidation Act, particularly with the many statutory requirements and amendments. The noble Lord said that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, gave no indication of interfering with the structure of tribunals. I think I heard that right but I would like that confirmed. He went on to say that chapter 9 schedule D mentioned review and reform of all tribunals and whether they are value for money. The phrase ““value for money”” concerns me greatly because I was very involved in the Leasehold Reform Act, which was to help ordinary people to bring their problems without leasehold, and by accident, as much as anything, in the Committee stage, I asked what costs people would have to meet and the reply was, ““Everything including the milk for the office cat””. That set the Committee on the alert and we were all very concerned, and a limitation was brought in for people if they had to pay charges to take a case to a tribunal—I am talking about a leasehold tribunal; there was a maximum charge of £500. Without that restriction, if we had been feeding the office cat, the costs would have been enormous and would have ruled out many people. Some people bring cases to a tribunal as individuals, and they should always have that right. Those who have represented themselves in a case, sometimes do better than those who are badly represented. If one is well represented at a tribunal that is fine, but if you are badly represented, the tribunal might have given you a better hearing without that awful person supposedly giving your side of the case. It is very important to have lay members and I would not want to see them damaged or destroyed in any way. We must realise that changes will gradually have to occur. As I said there is the possibility of looking at a situation where perhaps a panel of three would decide whether a case was suitable for a chairman only. When the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, spoke of a judge sitting alone, I would not want to confuse that with the new mediation role. At Woburn Place—it is now in Kingsway—I sat in London Central and I understand that that is working very well. It is a case of placing the applicant and the defendant in separate rooms and the judge either meeting them separately or together, hearing their case and deciding whether they can reach an agreement. A large proportion of cases heard in that way reach settlement. I do not know where the ACAS role comes in—before then or at that stage—and I cannot give details on that, but I would not want those cases to be described as for a judge sitting alone because the mediation process is quite a different process. I have an open mind on the amendment and I shall wait to hear what the Government have to say.