Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of (a) the annual sitting cap for fee-paid judges and (b) judicial availability in the (i) tribunal system, (ii) Immigration and Asylum Chamber and (iii) Social Entitlement Chamber on the number of tribunal hearings cancelled or delayed in the latest period for which data is available.

The Ministry of Justice does not collect data on the number of tribunal hearings that have been delayed or cancelled specifically due to annual limits on the number of sitting days by fee-paid judges. While tribunal performance statistics are published quarterly, they do not disaggregate delays or cancellations by cause.

Any hearing delays or cancellations in the tribunal system, which can occur for a range of reasons, including judicial availability, would not be directly attributable to sitting caps, as these would be applied before sitting days are scheduled.

It is the Chamber President’s responsibility to set expectations around how many days individual fee-paid judges should sit in the tribunal each year. It is a long-standing practice for reasons of fairness and well-being that no fee-paid office holder should exceed the level of business days of a salaried counterpart. Moreover, sitting levels will vary considerably between individual fee-paid judges. Operational decisions regarding judicial deployment, including sitting day allocations, are managed by HM Courts and Tribunals Service in consultation with the judiciary.