Lord Marland:
I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving me advance warning that he was going to raise that issue, and I am happy to deal with it in a moment. First, however, I must deal with the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner.
I think that there is some misunderstanding here. It is already the case that where a deposit is paid it is always refunded to the paying party unless a cost order is made by a judge. That is the case. Refunds happen whether a case continues to judgment or is withdrawn part way through the proceedings, so there is always the case for recourse. In fact, the Government have accepted Mr Justice Underhill’s recommendations that there should be much more flexibility in the deposit-paying order regime. I hope that the noble Baroness is content that that deals with that issue. I do not know how this misunderstanding happened, but we can certainly talk further about it afterwards.
We recognise that there has been a trend for discrimination claims to obtain large awards. They are trailed as discrimination claims because people think they can get the sympathy of the judge in advance or during the case, because discrimination is not an attractive thing to be accused of—or to suffer from, much more to the point. Therefore, we as a Government are committed, working with the employment tribunals, case-by-case, to see how we can improve that. Obviously, as the noble Earl says, if we follow the procedure of going to ACAS first—and of course ACAS has many more resources and greater teeth, as applies to various earlier amendments—we can deal with this much more vigorously and much more fairly, as the noble Earl rightly seeks. I am happy to discuss the matter with the noble Earl later, as are my officials, but, on the basis of what I have said to the noble Baroness, I hope that she will withdraw her amendment.