Posted: Wednesday 28 September 2011
Two Year Qualifying Service & Tribunal Fee?
As followers of this blog will know, there are a number of proposals affecting Employment law and Tribunal procedure which we thought were currently under consideration. The Government has been consulting about these and are still to publish their response to the consultation. So their recent statement on Red Tape - One In One Out Statement may contain an inadvertent leak.
When discussing what they are doing they state (at p14) that they have "Consulted on changes to employment law that will give business the confidence to take on staff. We are increasing the qualifying period for employees to be able to bring a claim for unfair dismissal from one to two years and introducing fees for lodging employment tribunal cases to tackle vexatious claims. "
This appears to indicate that the Government have made their decision on two key elements of Tribunal reform, and "announced" it before formally publishing their Response.
If accurate then this is a radical change particularly in respect of the change to the "qualifying period" and takes the law back to where it was before the last Labour government. This will not be a popular change for employees as it makes it more difficult to claim unfair dismissal but may give employers much needed flexibility. The imposition of fees is also a fundamental change to the ethos of the Tribunal system but, again, could be good news for employers.
It could be just bad wording in the Red Tape statement, or radical reform to the Tribunal system is about to be (formally) announced. I'll keep you updated!
