October 17, 2011
At a briefing of the department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Ed Davey Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs, commented amongst other things on the introduction of fees for cases brought at the Employment Tribunal and on the implementation of the Agency Workers Directive which is due in October this year.
Of the new tribunal fees, upon which the Ministry of Justice is to launch a consultation next month, Mr Davey said that the poorest people would not be expected to pay, with an exemption and remission being available to those on low incomes. He said “people will be pleased by the generosity of the remissions” he went on to confirm that “people on low incomes will pay no fees.”
Meanwhile, on the implementation of the Agency Workers Directive, which is aimed at addressing the inequality between temporary and permanent staff wages, Mr Davey described the implementation as ‘frustrating’. He said “I needed the agreement of the CBI (the confederation of British Industry) and the TUC (Trade Union Congress) for any change I made, otherwise it would have been subject to a judicial review. If we had lost a judicial review, we would have lost the 12-week exemption which many other member states don’t have. When I looked businesses in the eye and asked whether I should put this at risk, they said no. There was nothing else we could do but go ahead.”
Mr Davey also commented during the briefing on the intended consultation into tribunal discrimination awards. He said that press reports were often misleading on the sums involved, with six figure awards being rare.
