Previously on this blog, I have noted how, since February this year, HM Courts & Tribunal Service has been magically shrinking the backlog of Employment Tribunal cases, by retrospectively revising downwards its previously published monthly management information (MI). The backlog as of December 2022, for example, was 50,518 according to the MI data set published by HMCTS on 13 February 2023, but has been steadily revised down to 40,098 in the data set published on 10 August – an overall revision of 21%.

And this week a curious ‘news’ article in the Daily Mirror about Employment Tribunal waiting times – based on figures released by justice minister Mike Freer a full six months ago, and already two years out of date – led me to an interesting correction by Minister Freer, in July, of an answer he had given to Labour MP Chris Elmore during oral justice questions in June.

On 27 June, asked by Elmore about average Employment Tribunal waiting times, Freer had stated:

Following a merger of IT systems, there is no current data on average waiting times, but the outstanding caseload has reduced from 48,000 in February to 41,000 in March this year because of an increase in the number of sitting days. As well as the increased sitting day allocation, we continue to support and reform the employment tribunals process and to make progress in reducing the backlog.

But on 3 July, this answer was corrected by the Minister to say:

Following a merger of IT systems, there is no current data on average waiting times, but the outstanding caseload has reduced from 48,000 in February to 41,000 in March this year, in part because of an increase in the number of sitting days. As well as the increased sitting day allocation, we continue to support and reform the employment tribunals process and to make progress in reducing the backlog.

And with good reason. Because a reduction of 7,000 cases in just one month is pretty impressive – at that rate, we could expect the backlog to have evaporated completely at some point in the next few weeks. However, as can be seen from the following table, the backlog was reduced by 7,600 cases (16%), from 48,605 in February to 41,005 in March, only by the HMCTS’s retrospective revision of the data between the MI data set published on 13 April 2023, and the data set published on 13 July that was presumably available to Minister Freer (and whoever drafted his answer for him) on 27 June.

In fact, according to the most recent MI data set, published by HMCTS on 10 August, the backlog fell from 40,130 in February, to 39,724 in March – a fall of just 1% – before increasing to 40,938 in May, and then falling marginally to 40,610 in June. Which is just 335 cases fewer than in June last year, when – according to this most recent data set – the backlog stood at 40,945.

And, at the time that Minister Freer corrected his previous answer to Chris Elmore, on 3 July, he would have known that, according to the then latest (but not yet published) data set, the backlog had fallen from 41,405 in February, to 41,005 in March – a reduction of just 400 cases, not 7,000 as claimed in the Minister’s answers.

In short, over the past year the (welcome and clearly much needed) increase in sitting days would appear to have reduced the backlog by a mere 335 cases (0.8%). Everything else is just data alchemy. And Minister Freer has been a bit, well, free with his parliamentary answers.

Here is what has actually happened with the backlog of Employment Tribunal cases over the past year, according to the latest set of monthly HMCTS management information, published on 10 August. If you can spot where the backlog shrank by 7,000 cases in the space of one month in early 2023, as claimed by Minister Freer last month, then all I can say is you should have gone to Specsavers.