The points that the noble Lord raises are fair ones. He asks what happens if the Senior President of Tribunals has problems reported to him. We have indicated that there is now a process by which the department, through the drop-down menu scheme, does get regular indications of where there are problems, so they can be addressed. As I also indicated in my remarks, if the senior president thought that the DWP was systematically ignoring all of them, or if he thought that he had written a letter to the department and the department was still ignoring it and was not making it public, there is a separate statutory power available to him in paragraph 13 of Schedule 1 to the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 to lay representations before Parliament—before noble Lords and in the other place—of any,
“matters that appear to him to be matters of importance relating … to the administration of justice by tribunals”.
If he thought that there were systemic problems that were not being addressed and that his representations, or those from others within the tribunal system, were being routinely ignored, there is quite an important provision there which allows him to, as it were, leapfrog the Government and come directly to Parliament.
The noble Lord’s second question was about the £20,000 of judicial time that can be freed up. I am sure that it is not the only thing that can be done and that it does not come at the expense of other things. I am
sure that there are many ways in which better decision-making through the mandatory reconsideration process should, hopefully, reduce the number of cases that are going forward and therefore allow such cases as are put forward to be dealt with more speedily. I hope that reassures the noble Lord.