asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they will increase access to justice by extending legal aid to proceedings in employment tribunals. [HL2699]

It would be premature to make any decisions about extending publicly-funded representation in tribunal proceedings before the Government have completed their review of the extent to which current procedures and other arrangements, including representation, comply with our ECHR and EU obligations and until we have identified options for ensuring compliance in the future. If legal aid were to be extended to provide some representation in employment tribunal proceedings, it could not realistically be made available beyond a limited range of cases, given other priority calls on the budget. Factors to be considered would include the complexity of the case, factually or legally, the public importance of the issues at stake and the availability to the applicant of other sources of representation.