Clause 27 - Practice directions
Employment Bill
9:30 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I am deeply disappointed by the Minister's response. He says that practice directions will not always merely seek to extend best practice. However, it is not obvious that it is unnecessary to consult on practice directions that do seek to extend best practice, and people may not agree on what extends best practice. Subsection (2) of proposed new section 7A explicitly states:
''Employment tribunal procedure regulations may, instead of providing for any matter,''--
that is, rather than the substance of the matter being included in regulations that will be subject to the, admittedly lame, parliamentary scrutiny procedure for statutory instruments—
''refer to provision made or to be made about that matter by directions''.
As I understand subsection (2), we can go from primary legislation to substantive regulation without any further parliamentary scrutiny. That is a serious issue. I anticipated that the Minister would say that he would expect presidents to consult users of tribunals, as a matter of course, before introducing practice directions. It is extraordinary if the Minister envisages that the tribunal president should ever want to make a practice direction without talking to the recognised and established user groups, who represent all parties who use the tribunals. I should have thought that the Minister would readily concede that in principle, even if he does not want to be bound by including a provision to that effect in the Bill.
The Minister did not say that, even in principle, he would expect presidents to consult as a matter of course. That is an extraordinary position for a Government who are apparently committed to
openness and accountability to take, so I am deeply disappointed by his response. However, looking around me, I am not minded to press the amendment to a Division.