Employment Bill [HL]

I said on a previous amendment that we have all heard of cases which get through the net of conciliation, when the tribunal has power to strike them out. However, there is no evidence at all, from any survey, that those cases are numerous. Section 33 of the Employment Tribunals Act gives the tribunal or the chairman power to strike out a claim that is vexatious or unreasonable. The regulations that I quoted under a previous amendment add to that, but at the moment I have lost my note of them. The right of the tribunal and the chairman to strike out claims that are vexatious, scandalous or unreasonable or are being pursued in a manner which is vexatious or unreasonable is made very clear in the 2004 regulations. The only work that has been done on this suggests that there are very few of those because cases are not often struck out. I do not see how the word ““frivolous”” would add anything to the present law. If the noble Baroness wants the word, she can have it as far as I am concerned, but I do not believe that it will make any practical difference for those practising in the employment tribunal world. It is very important that vexatious, unreasonable or frivolous actions should not waste the time of an employment tribunal. There are plenty of powers to get rid of them as the employment regulations of 2004 stand and as the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 stands. I do not see that this amendment would add anything in practice, although I have yet to discuss this with people who practise day-in and day-out before employment tribunals. I declare as an interest the chambers in which I used to be an active member but am now a retired member. It contains many members of the Bar who practise in tribunals, and I have never heard from any of them that there are a lot of frivolous claims that get past the checks and waste the time of the tribunals. If there is such research, it should be produced on Report, but those practitioners would say, ““You can have the word if you want to, but it won’t make a jot of difference””.