Number-crunching at the Ministry

Employment tribunal fees could be reintroduced but at a lower level, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) permanent secretary Richard Heaton has told MPs.

Giving evidence to the Justice Committee this week, Heaton said it was important to set the fee level so as to be ‘proportionate, progressive and maintain access to justice’, following the Supreme Court’s Unison judgment that fees unlawfully restricted access to justice. Asked to comment on rumours ministers are considering a return to fees, he said he thought fees ‘can work’ as long as they are set at the right level but that there are ‘no immediate plans' and 'we’re still working on it’.

Since Unison, the MoJ has sent 42,000 letters to claimants and paid back £22m.

Heaton said the department has been forced to make ‘tough decisions’ since 2010, when it was asked to cut its budget by 40%. For example, in September it dropped plans for a £66m Transforming Compliance and Enforcement Programme (TCEP) to improve enforcement of court orders and criminal fines because it couldn’t afford to proceed.

Some £18m had been spent on TCEP by the end of August 2018, according to a Freedom of Information request. Committee member Marie Rimmer MP said she understood TCEP had realised £31m by collecting unpaid debt before it was stopped and that, if completed, it would have collected £427m. Asked if this was ‘a wise decision’, Heaton said halting TCEP ‘was not a decision any of us wished to take but it was forced on us by budgetary arithmetic’. He agreed the MoJ baseline budget was ‘unrealistic’.

MoJ chief financial officer Mike Driver said the department had been on course to overspend by £500m unless it took action to save funds. He said the department still lacked ‘realistic and workable plans’ for 2019-20.

Heaton added that the MoJ is actively engaged with the Treasury and is likely to ask for extra money in the spring supplementary estimates because ‘there are challenges to the legal aid fund we would want to rectify’.

The MoJ received an extra £17.4m for Brexit, two-thirds of which has been allocated to staffing costs, including expertise in negotiations on trade and withdrawal.