A former Lord Chancellor was kept in the dark about an IT bug in the courts computers which is said to have led to evidence going missing.
Alex Chalk KC, who led the Ministry of Justice under the Conservatives from April 2023 to July last year, called the revelations “unbelievably serious” and compared it to the Post Office Horizon scandal.
On Friday, news broke through the BBC that the IT bug caused evidence to go missing, be overwritten, or appear lost.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) says there is no evidence to suggest any case outcomes were affected as a result of the issues.
But the organisation is accused of taking several years to react to the issue, and it is said judges in civil, family and tribunal courts made rulings on cases when evidence was potentially incomplete.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Chalk said he was not told of the issue when he was in post as Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.
“The thing that is so troubling is that this report evidently got on to the desk of the senior leadership of HMCTS in March 2024 when I was in office, and it was never brought to my attention”, he said.
“And I am incredibly troubled by that, because any Lord Chancellor, of any stripe, if they discover that there’s potentially a situation in the courts which is leading to injustice, then you will immediately want to investigate that, and yet in effect that was covered up and I’m afraid I think that is extremely serious.”
He said the IT issue could have impacted on cases determining whether a child is taken into care.
“So unbelievably serious”, he said. “And, so the whistle blowers indicate, it could potentially have bled into other tribunals as well, whether it deals with divorce and so on.”
HMCTS said there is no evidence to suggest any case outcomes were affected as a result of the issues.
The bug was found in case-management software used by HMCTS and the Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) Tribunal, which handles benefit appeals, is thought to have been most affected, the BBC said.
Referred to as Judicial Case Manager, MyHMCTS or CCD, the BBC said the software is used to manage evidence and track cases, and is used by judges, lawyers, case workers and members of the public.
Documents seen by the BBC show the bug caused data to be obscured from view, meaning some evidence was sometimes not visible as part of case files used in court.
The BBC said a leaked internal report said HMCTS did not know the full extent of the data corruption, including whether or how it had affected cases.
The BBC said several sources within HMCTS have likened the situation to the Horizon Post Office scandal.
Mr Chalk was asked on the Radio 4 Today programme if what has happened could be compared to the Post Office scandal, and he said: “It could be.”
An HMCTS spokesperson said: “Our internal investigation found no evidence that any case outcomes were affected as a result of these technical issues.
“The digitisation of our systems is vital to bring courts and tribunals into the modern era and provide quicker, simpler access to justice for all those who use our services.
“We will continue to press ahead with our important modernisation.”
It is understood that while the bug resulted in some documents not being accessible to users on the digital platform, they were in fact always present on the system.
It is also understood that because of a number of “fail-safes”, parties and judges involved in these cases always had access to the documents they needed.
