To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what estimate his Department has made of the cost to (a) the Government, (b) businesses and (c) employees of making mediation a compulsory step in employment disputes. (151289)

The Department has made no estimate of these costs. The arguments for and against compulsory mediation were assessed by Michael Gibbons in his independent review “A review of Employment Dispute Resolution in Great Britain”, published in March 2007. The review concluded that

“the Government should adopt a voluntary approach to encourage and enable more use of alternative dispute resolution techniques in order to settle disputes early”.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what representations his Department has received from trade unions on mediation in employment disputes. (151291)

The Department has received a number of representations in response to its consultation, “Resolving disputes in the workplace”, which closed on 20 June. These include representations from trades unions. We are currently assessing all responses to the consultation and the Government will publish its plans for the way forward in due course. Responses will be made available in the public domain.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform whether his Department holds figures on the proportion of employees which work for the same company following the resolution of an employment dispute (a) through mediation and (b) through other forms of resolution. (151296)

The information is as follows:

(a) The Government do not hold records on the outcome of private mediation, which is a confidential process between the parties concerned.

(b) Statistics on disputes which Acas helps to resolve through providing conciliation services are included in the Acas annual report. Statistics on disputes resolved through employment tribunals may be found in the employment tribunal service annual report. This includes figures for the number of orders of reinstatement made by tribunals. There is no system for tracking the employment history of claimants to tribunals after the end of the tribunal process and so the Government have no figures for the proportion of employees who remain with the same employer following the resolution at tribunal of their dispute.