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Employment Lawyer here; it is undoubtedly right that there should be some fees to bring an ET case. Fees cause people to pause for a moment. All that's needed is a slight pause, a £100 pause perhaps, to prevent the anger they feel following a dismissal from overcoming rationality. And I act for claimant's mostly, but I'm not void of common sense.

My own previous research on this indicates that imposing fees at the level they were imposed at has had the opposite effect to reducing frivolous claims. We know this because otherwise we would expect to see the proportion of successful claims at hearing to have improved greatly and they did not. In fact the opposite happened, and rates of hearing success reduced slightly. From the figures we can see that individual perceptions of chance are not linked to reality unless legal advice is sought, in fact without legal advice only 4% of those claimants whose claim ultimately turned out to be unsuccessful expected this to be the case at the start of the claim.

I believe the biggest hinderance to reducing numbers of meritless claims is access to advice.
My own research shows that the more advice prior to proceedings a party receives, the more the perception of likely outcome result will mirror the actual outcome result achieved.

If everyone who ‘lost’ a claim had had accurate advice, (assuming this explanation of their case chances had the effect of them withdrawing), this would represent approx 14% less cases without merit proceeding to the tribunal.

Looking at the losing first tier tribunal cases,[.....], taking the 2013 survey figures [....] 14% of 105,803 is 14812 [...] [could] have been withdrawn if the claimant had had accurate advice.

I admit it's difficult to take a broad sweep like this though because wages claims have a 72% chance of success in their own right, compared with race at 16% success. This is in large part due to the hurdles of proof. Knowing it and proving it are two different things.

The truth is there is no one answer to reducing meritless claims. Someone smarter than me (if such a person exists....) would need to look at this and sort it out.

FYI the government knew the numbers would reduce like this well in advance of imposing the fees. I found research from before the imposition of the fee regime, which showed that the Government knew that charging a fee for using the employment tribunal would have a large effect on applications and that this would not be linked to the merit of the claim. A survey of tribunal user groups assessed for potential fee impact was undertaken. Of the groups surveryed about whether a fee would change their mind about bringing a claim, 45% of claimants with full time employment status stated they would not have proceeded if charged a £250 fee. Claimants with insecure ‘temporary’ employment status were the largest group known to be affected by the fee, with 72% of claimants stating they would not have proceeded with their claim if charged £250. Claimants on lower incomes were found to be 65% less likely to proceed with their claim if charged.
The lowest proportion of claimant group type to say that a fee of £250 would have influenced them to withdraw their claim was those claimants that were ultimately unsuccessful when proceeding to a full hearing, at only 39%. This research demonstrated in advance that the introduction of a fee of £250 would have the least influence on claims with no merit and would most affect claimants of insecure employment status or low incomes.

But they brought it in anyway. Is anyone surprised. Also I really should probably do some work now...