Part 1: Tribunals and Inquiries Background Administrative Support
24.In Transforming Public Services, the Government set out its plans to create a single Tribunals Service to provide common administrative support to the main central government tribunals. The new Service, an executive agency of what was the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) and is now the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), was launched in April 2006. It provides support to a range of tribunals, including the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, the Social Security and Child Support Tribunals, the employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, and the Mental Health Review Tribunals in England. Most tribunals which are the responsibility of central government are now administered by the Tribunals Service, or will join the Service over the next few years.
25.The Tribunals Service was created by machinery of government changes. Legislation was not required. The Act does not, therefore, set out a blueprint for the new agency. The Act does, however, give the Lord Chancellor the power to transfer to himself certain statutory powers and duties that primarily relate to the provision of administrative support for tribunals. It entrenches these powers and duties with the office of the Lord Chancellor so that they can be transferred to another minister only by primary legislation.
26.In developing these proposals, the intention has been to follow the principles underlying the evolving constitutional settlement between the executive and the judiciary set out in the concordat agreed between the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales in January 2004, and the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (“CRA 2005”).