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Employment tribunal reforms will 'impede access to justice'

A two -year rule is unlikely to cause any real increase in the number of spurious claims requiring no qualifying period of service. There are quite enough spurious claims already. As any employment lawyer will tell you, as a matter of course, this is what happens: if the claimant is female, in goes a sex discrimination claim; if from an ethnic minority, it' s a race discrimination claim. If the claimant is also off sick, add a disability claim. And if it's an elderly gay ethnic minority claimant with a religious bent, well, we a have a veritable cornucopia of claims. The "now, what else can we throw in for good measure?" tactic is alive and kicking. What is needed is a more robust costs approach by tribunals towards spurious claims. Everyone in the business knows that the tribunals are full of nuisance claims entirely without merit, but advanced in the hope that the employer will stump up at least some money just to get rid of the claim. After all, what do the claimants have to lose?

27-Jan-2011

5:30 pm