Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information her Department holds on the number of tribunal hearings that have been (a) delayed and (b) cancelled due to annual limits on the number of sitting days by fee‑paid judges in (i) total, (ii) the Immigration and Asylum Chamber and (iii) the Social Entitlement Chamber in each of the last five years.

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.