Stephen Levinson assesses the government’s tribunal bandwagon
Those familiar with some history may be forgiven for thinking that the government’s recent consultation paper, Resolving Workplace Disputes, was written by amnesiacs. For an institution less than 50 years old employment tribunals have been much reviewed.
There was Justice in 1987; the green paper, Options for Reform in 1994; Fairness at Work in 1998; the Leggatt Report in 2001 and, in 2002, the very thorough report of the Employment Tribunal System Taskforce (ETST). There was a white paper in 2004, and in 2007 the Ministry of Justice chipped in with Transforming Tribunals. Then again in 2010 the secretive Tribunal Steering Board came up with a Report on Consistency. What is notable about the current offering is that although many of the 13 ideas proposed have appeared before in one or more of those reports no acknowledgement of this appears anywhere.
Alarmingly the only mention to previous work on tribunals is to the Gibbons Review of 2007—a piece of matchless political expediency—which told the world what it already knew (that the statutory procedures introduced in 2004
