In June this year – and then again in July for good measure – junior justice minister Mike Freer MP – who almost certainly doesn’t smell of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs and too many right wing meetings – told the House of Commons that the Employment Tribunal backlog “has decreased from 48,000 in February to 41,000 in March this year”. Which, if true, would be deeply impressive. At that rate of progress, the backlog would have been reduced to next to nothing by September – that is, two months ago.

Reader, the Employment Tribunal backlog did not decrease from 48,000 in February to 41,000 in March this year. And the backlog was not cleared by September.

We know this because, this morning, the Ministry of Justice published the latest set of HM Courts & Tribunal Service monthly management information, covering up to September. And, as can be seen from the following chart, this shows that the Employment Tribunal backlog was 37,631 in February, 37,201 in March, and 37,924 in September.

Maybe the Employment Tribunal backlog is just ‘the wrong crisis’ for Minister Freer’s skillset. But you do not have to have won the Chern Medal to understand that a reduction from 37,631 to 37,201 is not as impressive as a reduction from 48,000 to 41,000. Or that an increase from 37,631 in February to 37,924 in September is even less prideworthy.

So, where did the clueless Minister Freer get his meaningless (and misleading) figures of 48,000 and 41,000? The short answer is that, since February this year, HM Courts & Tribunals Service have been engaging in some statistical alchemy, magically shrinking their previously published figures for the backlog. And Minister Freer – or whoever drafted his statements for him – was a bit, well, disingenuous in their selection from the various modified figures for February and March. If you’re feeling a bit nerdy, the full story is set out here, here and here on this blog.

The good news, of course, is that the Employment Tribunal backlog is not as big as – not so long ago – we thought it was. Indeed, at 37,924 it’s down to the level it was (stated to be) at in early 2020, before Covid and the lockdowns pushed it to more than 50,000 in early 2021.

Then again, at 37,924 the backlog is still a lot bigger than it was (stated to be) in April 2018, nine months after the abolition of the Ministry’s justice-denying tribunal fees regime, when it stood at just 22,689. But with the mathematically-challenged Minister Freer in charge, it will probably vanish entirely soon. Indeed, by now there may even be a negative backlog. Or something.