Government increases to employment tribunal fees breach domestic and European law, two senior legal academics claimed yesterday.

Ministers significantly increased tribunal fees four years ago in an effort to force those using the courts to pay for them.

However, two Oxford University professors argue that the policy is a “clear violation of long-established” UK and EU law, as the increase in fees means that the cost of bringing a claim now often outweighs the benefit of a potential win for many claimants.

Abi Adams and Jeremias Prassl, an economics and law professor respectively, point out that tribunal fees now run to as much as £1,200 – more than a month’s salary on the minimum wage.

In a forthcoming article in the academic journal Modern Law Review, they argue that claims have dropped by more than 70 per cent since the introduction of the fees. The professors’ research found that as many as half of claimants with a high chance of success could expect to lose money even if they won their cases.

The authors of the report said that claims for relatively low amounts of money, such as those typically brought by low-income, zero-hours workers, have been hit especially hard by the policy.

“The employment tribunal fees are a clear denial of access to the courts,” said Prassl. While Adams commented: “The average award for some employment claims, such as unauthorised deduction from wages, is as low as £600. With fees ranging from £390 to £1,200, it does not make economic sense for many claimants to enforce their rights.”

A “huge volume” of new laws will be required as the UK withdraws from the EU, leaving little time for any other legislation, peers suggested to ministers yesterday.

Lawyers and other experts have warned that up to 15 bills may be needed as a result of Brexit. They would be in addition to the Great Repeal Bill, which will incorporate EU law into British statute.

The Institute for Government, a London think tank, has said recently that the prospective welter of Brexit legislation was likely to have a detrimental impact on the government’s domestic agenda.

According to the Press Association, Theresa May will trigger the Article 50 process, which begins two years of withdrawal negotiations, on March 29. In the House of Lords yesterday Labour’s Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town pressed the government over how it planned to deal with the increased legislative workload as a result of leaving the EU.

Responding, the Brexit minister Lord Bridges of Headley said: “I am not going to go into that much detail now. Good things come to those who wait. “A lot of thought has been going into...not just the amount of legislation that will be required be it primary or secondary but also the need to make sure that we get those statutes on to the statute book in time whilst balancing the need for effective and proper scrutiny.”

Six-figure rewards have not encouraged employees to blow the whistle on illegal cartels, lawyers argued yesterday as the competition watchdog launched a media blitz to promote its scheme.

The Competition and Markets Authority yesterday attempted to reignite awareness of its policy of offering bounties of up to £100,000 – as well as the promise of anonymity – for whistleblowers. Its campaign, “We’re cracking down on cartels”, has been running for some time, prompting lawyers to argue that there is a relative lack of awareness of the scheme.

“Despite some high-profile cases many smaller businesses still don’t understand competition law well,” said Marc Israel, a partner at the City of London office of White & Case, the US law firm.

He went on to speculate: “The CMA doesn’t feel it is getting enough cases from leniency applications or uncovering cartels from other sources. A reward system for whistleblowers offering up to £100,000 has existed for a number of years but does not seem to have led to many cases.”

And Neil Cuninghame, a partner at City law firm Ashurst, pointed out that “rewards will generally not be paid to those who have directly involved in the relevant cartel conduct, although such individuals can apply for immunity from prosecution for themselves and their companies”.

Kick-starting the campaign, Andrea Coscelli, the authority’s acting chief executive, described cartels as “a form of stealing that cheats ordinary people as well as other businesses by undermining competition”.

She added: “Cartels are carried out in secret to make you think you are getting a fair deal, even when you are being conspired against to keep prices high.”

Coroners will no longer be forced to order inquests into the deaths of those subject to deprivation of liberty safeguards from the beginning of next month.

Measures under the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which received royal assent at the end of January, are due to come into force in the next few days and have been welcomed by social care professionals.

“At present many older people with dementia, whose deaths are expected, are frequently subjected to investigations after death,” said Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, the representative body for independent providers of adult social care.

“Often police who are uniformed attend care homes under their legal duties and begin questioning staff and relatives as though a crime has been committed,” he said. “This is extremely distressing for families, care home staff and fellow residents.”

Care England argues that investigations into deaths under the deprivation of liberty safeguards “take needless time, which prevents families from being able to mourn and proceed with funeral arrangements”.

The change in the law is set for April 3 and comes just a fortnight after the Law Commission criticised the safeguarding system.

It said that hundreds of thousands of people with dementia and learning difficulties were being detained in hospitals and care homes unlawfully after the Supreme Court widened the definition of deprivation of liberty in 2014 to everyone who was not free to leave their accommodation and was subject to continuous supervision.

BPP University law school has the dubious honour of running the most expensive solicitor qualification course in the country after the private institution boosted fees by more than 3 per cent.

Enrolling on the BPP legal practice course in London this September will cost students £15,740 – £70 more than the equivalent course offered by its arch rival the University of Law.

According to figures compiled by the website Legal Cheek, BPP increased its fees for its London course by 3.3 per cent, while ULaw has ramped up costs by only 2.9 per cent in the capital.

The biggest increase overall for the LPC in London was at Westminster University, which increased fees by more than 4 per cent to £14,500.

The fees analysis demonstrated the wide difference between institutions. The cheapest LPC on offer was at Leeds Beckett University, which has kept its charges flat at £7,700. The average LPC fee in England and Wales from September will be £11,554 – an inflation-busting rise of 4.6 per cent.

Legal Cheek pointed out that the LPC rise contrasted with a falling average fee for the bar professional training course, the vocational requirement for barristers. It revealed that the average fee for that course dropped by around £70, or 0.4 per cent, to £15,568.

But the fall was driven exclusively by the University of Law, which has launched a price war with BPP. ULaw has reduced its bar course fee by 8 per cent to £17,500.

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