New Clause 2
Employment Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Minister, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; Huntingdon, Conservative)
I put my name to the new clause on a probing basis, because important questions raised in the other place have not yet been answered. The Government say that they recognise that there is a need to address the recovery of awards, but they do not believe that direct enforcement is the way to deal with such claims. Will the Minister tell us what form enforcement should take instead?
The new clause deals with a problem that is often faced by those at the poorer end of the employment spectrum. It was originally tabled in the other place by Baroness Turner at the request of Citizens Advice, with the aim of dealing with the problem of non-payment of employment tribunal awards by rogue employers.
The current system is long and complex, and sometimes prohibitively expensive for those who have not been paid their award. There are, on average, some 15,000 employment tribunal awards made in favour of claimants each year, but Citizens Advice estimates that more than one in 10 does not receive their award. Citizens advice bureaux dealt with more than 1,000 cases last year alone, and Citizens Advice research also highlights the fact that nearly half those unpaid awards were for less than £2,000 and almost a quarter were for less than £1,000.
For those vulnerable workers affected, navigating the county court or High Court enforcement process can be a daunting challenge that involves a lot of time, stress and cost relative to the value of the award. Citizens Advice notes that many of those affected simply do not take their claims forward, that the impact on them can be devastating and that the total loss involved may be as much as £7 million per year. Rogue employers’ knowledge of the complexity of enforcement provisions means that they could see it as a commercial decision to avoid paying out, because, on balance, they might save more than they would be forced to pay out in the longer term.
The Government have said that they commissioned their own inquiry on this area, on the back of Citizens Advice. Will the Minister tell us what format the inquiry has taken and what results it has produced to date, bearing it in mind that the inquiry has been running at least from May?
There is a wrong here that needs to be recognised. I am interested to hear the Minister’s reaction to the question whether the new clause is the right way to go about that.