Employment Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 24: 24: After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause— ““Award of compensation: order for direct recovery etc. In the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 (c. 17), after section 36 (enforcement of decisions etc.) there is inserted— ““36A Award of compensation: order for direct recovery etc. The Secretary of State shall by order make regulations providing for the direct recovery by a claimant of an award of compensation made by an employment tribunal within three months of the decision, and for interest to be payable on amounts paid later than that date.”””” The noble Lord said: In support of this amendment I have to rely on those who have done a great deal of work in relation to employment tribunal awards of compensation that are not paid. Citizens Advice has produced a report on what it calls ““rogue employers”” who are, of course, a minority. It states: "““we believe that these provisions””—" that is those of the 2007 Act, which has improved the position with regard to application to the county court— "““do not go anywhere near far enough. For it is the common experience of CAB advisers that registration of an unpaid award in the County Court—which under the provisions of the 2007 Act is to become automatic and free of charge—frequently fails to secure payment as the associated consequences for the employer of continued non-compliance are negligible … Furthermore, these provisions of the 2007 Act””," which I have already said improve the position, "““have not yet been implemented, and the Government has not yet given any indication of when they will be. A Ministry of Justice consultation document on implementation of Part 1 of the 2007 Act, published on 28 November 2007, simply states that ‘some detailed work remains to be done on this so that the new provisions work seamlessly between Acas, the tribunals, the county courts and enforcement agencies’. We suspect and fear that this work is no longer a priority for the Tribunals Service and Ministry of Justice.""Accordingly, for the time being successful tribunal claimants who have not received their award still need to pay to register the unpaid award in the County Court before they can begin enforcement action, and those who have not received a COT3””—" the form for payment— "““settlement cannot enforce the settlement through the County Court (as the 2007 Act provides for) … the survey of CAB advisers we conducted for our March 2005 report Hollow victories suggested that, each year, the 430 Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales alone deal with some 650 unpaid employment tribunal awards, which is one in 20 of the some 13,000 awards made by the tribunals each year. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to conclude that the total number of unpaid awards is in the region of 1,000 per year—or one in 13 of all awards.""Citizens Advice believes that this is a significant proportion of all tribunal awards, and we would suggest that such a degree of non-compliance seriously undermines the credibility of both the employment tribunal system as a whole, and the very welcome reforms of that system set out in the current Employment Bill. Furthermore, we would suggest that such non-compliance tends to impact disproportionately on the lowest paid and most vulnerable workers, who are over represented in the caseload of Citizens Advice Bureaux and who are, increasingly, a main focus of the Government’s wider policy on employment relations (see page 8 of our December 2007 report Rooting out the rogues).""Indeed, however ‘small’ the total number of unpaid awards … the impact on individual claimants is substantial, and can be devastating””." Citizens Advice’s document sets out the devastating consequences. It is not easy for a worker who has obtained an award of compensation in a tribunal to get it enforced. The thrust of the paper is that the Government should set up some automatic machinery by means of a new body that will see to it that compensation awards are paid. It may be that this amendment is not exactly drafted in the terms that Citizen Advice, which is daily concerned with people who just cannot go on trying to enforce their compensation awards, would suggest. Its thrust is to ask the Government to see that even after the reform of county court enforcement under paragraph 43 of Schedule 8 to the 2007 Act a new departure is needed. We suggest it should be direct recovery by the claimant of compensation awarded by the employment tribunal, certainly within three months—that is unduly modest—and for interest to be payable on amounts paid later than that date. I beg to move.