wrans/answers2025-09-22 conversation_67
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-09-22)

UK Parliament Hansard data: wrans/answers2025-09-22 conversation_67

Mr Andrew Snowden:To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what mechanisms exist for whistleblowers within HMCTS to report concerns about IT system flaws and their impact on justice. \p Sarah Sackman: Given the important and sensitive work undertaken across the civil, family and tribunal jurisdictions, and the Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) Tribunal in particular, it is entirely understandable that there will be concern at reports of an IT bug. It is important to reaffirm the Ministry of Justice’s commitment to a fair, open, and transparent justice system. Public trust in our courts is paramount, and any suggestion that this trust may have been compromised is taken extremely seriously.

There is no evidence of any impact on case outcomes to date. However, actions are underway by HMCTS and the Ministry of Justice to ensure that the technical error has not resulted in adverse outcomes or materially influenced judicial decisions. Recognising the importance of the effective running of HMCTS’s digital case managements systems, a technical fix was applied as a priority within the relevant jurisdictions with the final fix applied in January 2025.

In 2023, under the previous Government, HMCTS identified that a technical issue in the Civil, Family and Tribunals case management system was having an impact on some services because of the way that services were interacting with the Core Case Data (CCD) database. This technical issue had the potential to cause some documents and data fields to be hidden from view in certain cases across Civil, Family, and Tribunal jurisdictions.

Following a risk-based assessment, HMCTS initially undertook targeted investigations, which have since been significantly expanded. In Tribunals, the area affected was SSCS cases. In recent weeks, HMCTS has carried out additional work which has continued to assure that the technical issue was indeed of very low incidence and confirmed that there is no evidence of any impact on case outcomes to date. Further assurance work is ongoing.

In Civil and Family jurisdictions, no impact on judicial decisions has been identified to date. In Family Public Law, operational mitigations – such as local authorities supplying full bundles directly to the court – reduce the risk of missing documents on the CCD system affecting case outcomes.

Due to the sensitivity of these matters, further re-assurance work is still under way. Any further steps will be determined and communicated to parties should this work identify any cases of concern.

HMCTS follows established escalation protocols to ensure that technical issues are assessed and, where appropriate, disclosed to judges and legal professionals. In light of this episode, Ministers have asked that these processes are strengthened, including improvements to incident management and governance structures to update the risk assessment criteria on which HMCTS considers communication about technical problems to relevant affected partners or users, and strengthening the systematic handling of cross-cutting or architectural risks.

HMCTS staff can raise concerns through internal whistleblowing channels, which are managed independently and in line with departmental policy. All concerns are investigated and escalated appropriately.

The internal report referenced in media coverage was part of a whistleblowing investigation conducted in line with Ministry of Justice policies. In line with standard practice, we do not publish internal HR and whistleblowing reports. Likewise, it would not be appropriate to comment on questions about specific internal disciplinary investigations, other than to confirm that departmental policy and process are followed as required.

There are no plans to pause court digitisation. While technical challenges are an inevitable part of digital transformation, they are investigated and triaged according to risk. We are continuing to digitise and improve our services to support swift access to justice.

Over the span of the HMCTS Reform Programme there will have been many organisations involved in the development of the HMCTS case management systems, of which there are several. Major delivery partners are listed in Reform Programme documentation and procurement records, which are publicly available. The main suppliers which have worked on the development of the Civil, Family and Tribunals Platform (that includes Core Case Data) during the period of 2016 to present are:

Atos

Capgemini

CGI

Cognizant

Methods

PA Consulting

Scrumconnect

Transform UK

Solirius Consulting

Version 1

This includes the provision of any services in the development of the case management system, such as: development, quality assurance testing, architecture, user-centred design, data architecture, delivery management amongst others.