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Lords amendment: No. 4, in page 13, line 39, at end insert—
(3) Regulations may, in relation to cases to which this section applies, make provision for payments to be made by the Secretary of State to employees in prescribed circumstances in connection with court fees (including sheriff officers' and messengers-at-arms' fees for doing diligence) incurred, or likely to be incurred, by those employees in seeking to enforce decisions by virtue of subsection (2) above.
(4) The regulations may, in particular, make provision for the recovery of payments made under the regulations from persons to whom such payments are made; and any sum so recoverable may, without prejudice to any other method of recovery, be recovered by deduction from prescribed benefits, ("benefits" having the meaning given by the regulations).
(5) Any payment made by the Secretary of State under the regulations shall be paid out of the National Insurance Fund, and any sums recovered by him under the regulations shall be paid into that Fund.
§ The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Rossi)I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The amendment enables the Secretary of State, in certain circumstances, to advance to an employee an amount in respect of court fees payable as a result of invoking clause 16. The amendment appears as a result of points raised in Committee by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John). He was anxious that employees who were forced to sue their employers for sick pay might be deterred because the court fees would be exceptionally heavy, ranging between £45 and £50. In Committee, I agreed to consider those points and, as a result, amendments have brought forward from the other place.
Provision is made by way of loan, rather than grant, for the simple reason that in most cases the employee will probably be successful. He will, therefore, recover court fees from his employer as well as the money owed to him. In those circumstances it is only right that where he recovers the court fees, they should be repayable to the State, which advanced them in the first instance. The regulations will also provide that, should he be unable to recover the money because, for example, the employer has gone bankrupt, but he has been reasonably diligent in pursuing his remedy, the requirement to repay the loan will be waived.
§ Mr. J. W. Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)Like my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Graham), I have to justify my presence here today. I shall not have to ask all the questions that I intended to ask, because the Minister has answered some of the points. The Opposition are extremely grateful for the concession contained in the amendment.
As hon. Members know, it is the lawyers who spot these things, and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John) dwelt at some length on this matter in Committee and has obviously been successful.
535 However, what happens when only part of the sum is recoverable? If an employee makes a claim for £80 and the court fee is about £10, the employee may end up with only half of the amount that he claimed. Would the full fee be payable? In other words, is it the first charge on the money that the employee has gained? We wondered whether the regulations would be flexible so that it would be possible to waive a pro rata share of the fee. I do not know how much progress has been made on drafting the regulations, but judging from what the Minister said about the Government taking power to waive the right, in certain circumstances, to pull back those loans, they will clearly be fairly wide. If the Minister has the answers to those questions, I shall be able to sit down.
§ Mr. RossiI reinforce what I said earlier. If the employee shows due diligence about recovering the fees, but has been unsuccessful, we shall not require him to repay the money to us. In the instance that the hon. Gentleman cited, we would regard the employee as having recovered the money due to him, but he would have been short-changed and we would not try to take the fees from him in those circumstances.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Lords amendments Nos. 5 and 6 agreed to.