Clause 26 - Determination without a hearing
Employment Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 40, in page 34, line 7, after 'hearing', insert
'where both parties agree to such a determination'.
The amendment would provide that determination without a hearing can take place only if both parties agree. There is no substantial difference. The explanatory notes say that the Government have that circumstance in mind for allowing determination without a hearing and, perhaps more tellingly, the Trades Union Congress brief also states that categorically.
The clause as drafted is too wide. Henry VIII would be turning in his grave, because it provides for the Government to determine, by means of regulations, that any proceedings can be dispatched without a hearing in circumstances that the regulations may prescribe. I am stretching the point, but there is nothing to stop the Government from drafting those regulations to prescribe circumstances so wide and all-encompassing that they virtually do away with tribunals. I am sure that is not the Government's purpose, but as a matter of principle, if there are narrow circumstances in which the normal procedure will be done away with, it would be appropriate to include those circumstances in the Bill.
Clause 26 would write that into the 1996 Act by saying that tribunals may authorise determination without a hearing in circumstances where both the parties agree. That is the substance of the Government's position; why do they not include it in primary legislation to ensure that a Government now, or in the future, cannot remove classes of proceedings by defining new circumstances in which they could be dispatched, perhaps without the agreement of both parties and without a hearing?