Claimants are automating the filing and the courts are automating the hearing. Asked to measure the first, the government said it had written a principles document instead

In February a written question asked the government what assessment it had made of the effect of generative AI on the employment tribunal caseload. The answer, HL14836, is worth reading in full because it concedes and declines in the same breath.

The government is aware of the increased use of generative AI. Some stakeholders have reported that some potential employment tribunal claimants are using it to get a view on the strength of a claim or to help draft one. And then: while no formal assessment has been made of the impact of generative AI on the caseload, HMCTS has developed its own Responsible AI Principles guidance.

So the department that runs the tribunals accepts the behaviour is happening, states that nobody has measured what it does, and offers as its response a document about principles.

There is a second absence, and it arrived in June. The Ministry of Justice published its quarterly tribunal statistics on 11 June. The headline numbers are firm: 50,000 single claims received in 2025 to 2026, 26,000 disposed of, 64,000 open at the end of March, up 55 per cent in a year, with receipts up 39 per cent and disposals down 12.

But the breakdown by type of claim, which is the only place whistleblowing appears, comes from a case management system the tribunals are still migrating to. The release states that this makes value comparisons with the same period last year meaningless until case numbers stabilise, and that proportional comparisons only will be provided. Whistleblowing is not among the three types it does name.

That matters more than it sounds. Anyone wanting to check whether interim relief applications rose because more whistleblowers are being dismissed, rather than because applying got easier, needs that series. It exists and its producer says it cannot yet be compared. Figures now circulating that whistleblowing claims doubled are exactly the comparison the department disowns.

Meanwhile the state is buying the same technology. HMCTS has piloted AI transcription and summarisation to help judges process cases. The Administrative Justice Council said in March that AI should be the next phase of tribunal reform, including predictive scheduling and backlog management. The Ministry of Justice announced AI legal assistants for the Crown Court in June.

Both sides of the room are automating. Claimants file faster than the system can hear, and the system is being equipped to hear faster.

The Westminster point is not that a minister said something foolish. It is that on the single question of how much of this is caused by the technology, two arms of the same department have now said, in writing and four months apart, that the answer is not held. Not disputed. Not held. Six months on from the answer that said so, nothing has been published to change it, and nothing in that answer suggested anyone intended to go and find out.