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Lack of transcripts ‘prejudices employment hearings’

shawn mach
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From the Law Society Gazette:

More than 300 doctors, journalists and whistleblowers have called for employment tribunal proceedings to be recorded and official transcripts provided to parties to improve fairness and access to justice.

Signatories of a letter sent to Judge Barry Clarke, president of the employment tribunal services in England and Wales, say that an ‘accurate and complete court record is a fundamental prerequisite and basis for a fair trial’. But, they argue, the lack of an independent and complete transcript is a ‘serious shortcoming’ in the system.

At present, no official recording or transcripts are made of proceedings in the employment tribunal, and any person making one faces charges for contempt of court.

Current arrangements, the letter argues, mean that well-resourced defendants who can afford to employ a professional note-taker have a ‘considerable advantage’ over claimants, who are often representing themselves and rely on ‘memory and incomplete notes’.

More info: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/practice/lack-of-transcripts-prejudices-employment-hearings/5111947.article

 

Mike Hughes
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I find this immensely frustrating. The argument is essentially that a tribunal should be a court. We buy into this narrative seemingly without hesitation. Why?

Chairs become judges; papers become bundles and now informal hearings are alleged to need transcripts.

Elliot Kent
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Mike Hughes - 23 March 2022 03:53 PM

I find this immensely frustrating. The argument is essentially that a tribunal should be a court. We buy into this narrative seemingly without hesitation. Why?

Chairs become judges; papers become bundles and now informal hearings are alleged to need transcripts.

I am not sure this provides a real ground of objection to what is being proposed. I think all that they are saying is that the hearings should be recorded routinely, so that a transcript can be made if required, rather than the official record being limited to the judge’s (non-disclosable) handwritten note.

The main point of this of course would be to give you some comeback in the event that the judge is biased, belligerent or incompetent. At the moment, I suppose you just have to hope that the judge writes as much in their note. Otherwise your allegations are likely to be discarded as the ‘tediously common’ unsubstantiated complaints of a disappointed party (Kennaugh v Lloyd Jones [2013] EWCA Civ 1).

I suppose we have just, albeit accidentally as a by-product of telephone hearings, gone through this transformation in social security tribunals in England. Rather than scrawled handwritten notes by a rushed judge trying to jot down the key points of a hearing, we can now get the audio recording. This has maybe caused the clerks some inconvenience but I am not sure it has made the hearings any more or less formal than they otherwise were.

Certainly what it does do is give a claimant who has genuinely been mistreated by a tribunal a fighting chance of persuading anyone else of that fact.