Unison, R (On the Application Of) v The Lord Chancellor [2015]

The trade union UNISON has lost its Court of Appeal case against the introduction of employment tribunal fees in GB. Although fees do not apply to NI cases, their introduction into employment cases in GB has coincided a dramatic drop in the number of employment tribunal applications in that jurisdiction. UNISON argued the two were more than coincidence and that the introduction of fees was unlawful and contrary to EU law and in their original judicial review argued that many claimants would be unable to afford to bring a claim in tribunal, thereby removing the effective remedy required in law.

That may be so but the difficulty for UNISON is that there was little qualitative or quantitative