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Meeting of the Parliament 29 March 2012

29 Mar 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Tribunal System

McLetchie, David Con Lothian Watch on SPTV

That is called padding, Ms Grahame. [Laughter.]

I welcome the opportunity to speak slowly on this topic, following the launch of the Scottish Government’s consultation on a new tribunal system. Although a debate on the future of tribunals might not be among the most glamorous ever witnessed in the chamber—and no one can ever accuse me of adding a touch of glamour to any of the Parliament’s proceedings—the topic is, of course, important. As the minister and Jenny Marra have rightly indicated, tribunals are an important part of our civil justice system. In some instances, a tribunal is a forum for citizens to challenge decisions that are made by public bodies on entitlements to benefits and services and, because of that, it is imperative that they are independent of Government and the public organisations on whose decisions they adjudicate.

In other cases—and we have heard about the variety of tribunals in the judicial landscape—they are a forum for the resolution of private disputes; in fact, that is the function of the Lands Tribunal for Scotland and the Private Rented Housing Panel. Moreover, tribunals deal with certain reserved areas such as employment issues and disputes between employers and employee. They also offer an alternative—and less formal and less costly—dispute resolution mechanism to our courts; indeed, tribunals in Scotland deal with more than 80,000 cases annually. Without them, the individuals who use them would either lose an entire avenue of redress or be forced to take their grievances to an already overstretched court system.

The principle of tribunals as a forum of redress is an ancient one. Roman tribunes, from which the word “tribunal” originates, were elected to protect the rights of the proletariat against the arbitrary acts of the Government. Indeed, the parliamentary Labour Party at Westminster used to have an influential Tribune group until it discovered that the arbitrary acts the group was complaining about were those of its own Government.

As we know, the tribunal system grew on an ad hoc basis through the 20th century. The minister was quite right to refer to the important landmark that was the Franks report of 1957, which resulted in a move from the perception of tribunals as purely executive or administrative agencies to their being put on a judicial footing with the principles of openness, fairness and impartiality as the governing foundation for their work, about which we have already heard.

In Scotland, we have a distinction between the tribunals that deal with devolved matters and are therefore the Scottish Government’s responsibility and those that deal with reserved functions. As the Cabinet Secretary for Justice has previously acknowledged, users of a tribunal are unlikely to be concerned about, to care less about or even to be aware of whether a tribunal deals with a devolved or a reserved matter. The overall duty that we have is to ensure that tribunals for which the Scottish Government and we in the Scottish Parliament are responsible work efficiently and where appropriate, to collaborate with the United Kingdom Government on the tribunals for which it is responsible, but which have jurisdiction here.

It is interesting to note that, although 16 tribunals are fully devolved relative to their subject matter and are therefore open for inclusion in the new tribunal system that the minister has outlined and which is the subject of the consultation, the majority of tribunals by reference to case load operate in relation to reserved matters. Some of them function as part of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, while others operate on a free-standing basis.

It is not at all clear from the Government’s consultation document—particularly from paragraph 1.5—whether the Scottish Government’s intention is to seek a full-scale integration of tribunals across the present devolved-reserved divide or whether that is seen as a consequence of further constitutional change and thus a subject to be deferred for another day.

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Meeting of the Parliament 29 March 2012

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