NB I think this post was accidentally published yesterday in half finished form, something that has never happened before. It probably didn’t make a lot of sense. However, this is now the tidied and completed version.
The BBC Headline reads:
Courts service ‘covered up’ IT bug that caused evidence to go missing
The report claims that the upshot is that ‘judges in civil, family and tribunal courts will have made rulings on cases when evidence was incomplete.’
This news is pretty alarming, isn’t it? But also somewhat impenetrable. What does it actually mean? What was missing? How often did it happen? How important was it and did judges know information was missing? Because all we have is a news report about a leaked internal report, the detail is pretty much absent.
The report tells us that the software concerned is ‘known variously as Judicial Case Manager, MyHMCTS or CCD – is used to manage evidence and track cases before the courts. It is used by judges, lawyers, case workers and members of the public.’ I *think* that this encompasses the ‘portal’ that lawyers and judges now use to upload and access documents in public law children cases (why the same system has to have a bunch of different names is anyone’s guess), but in any event the fact that there are bugs in this system is certainly NOT a revelation. There have always been bugs in the system. Even if a document IS on the portal it isn’t always easy to find (though this lack of navigability is somewhat reduced with recent updates). Even before the portal we had analogue version of ‘missing documents’ problems – witness bundles that had been delivered and signed for were forever disappearing in a black hole, never to be found again, and judges were often not provided with copies of documents filed by email to the required court inbox, because there were not enough staff to check the inbox and forward them to the judge in time for the hearing (actually these last two still happen).
So, to that extent this is not news. Twas ever thus.
Here though is what is said specifically about family courts:
In the family courts, a different IT flaw caused thousands of documents to go missing, sources say.
In one instance, it is claimed a fault caused more than 4,000 documents to go missing from hundreds of public family law cases – including child protection cases.
The BBC understands this bug was discovered in 2023 and may have been present for some years. We have been told it has since been resolved but that no investigation was carried out to establish potential impact on case outcomes.
We asked the MoJ if any emergency child protection cases had been affected.
It did not respond to this question.
I’d like an answer to this question. I hope one will be forthcoming, but other than the quotes in this piece (regurgitated in other papers and online sources) I haven’t seen any substantive response from the MOJ / HMCTS, and certainly no announcement of further enquiry (see MOJ page here, where press releases are usually found, and HMCTS here). The vibe is very much ‘nothing to see here!’…
Former President of the Family Division is alarmed though, saying:
These hearings often decide the fate of people’s lives…An error could mean the difference between a child being removed from an unsafe environment or a vulnerable person missing out on benefits.
The BBC has spoken to several separate sources within HMCTS who liken the situation to the Horizon Post Office scandal, where executives tried to suppress evidence of the system’s flaws.
One says there was “general horror” at the design of the software, introduced by HMCTS in 2018, which they claim was “not designed properly or robustly” and had a long history of data loss.
Another says there was a general reluctance from senior management to “acknowledge or face the reality” of the situation, despite repeated warnings from the agency’s IT staff.
“There is a culture of cover-ups,” one told the BBC. “They’re not worried about risk to the public, they’re worried about people finding out about the risk to the public. It’s terrifying to witness.”
When asked, the MoJ told us several organisations had been involved in the design and development of the software but did not supply a list.
I expect – hope – we may hear more about this in due course. I hope we do, if for no other reason than to provide some belated reassurance that the systems are now robust (or will be made so), and that the ‘cultural’ issues are being tackled.
When historically I have tried to get clarity from MOJ / HMCTS about how they handle data breaches relating to anonymisation errors in published judgments, the responses have been less than clear or reassuring – I was never able to establish that any such breaches had been logged internally or self reported to the ICO by HMCTS, even where they were the responsibility of HMCTS staff rather than individual judges (to whom exemptions in relation to data protection apply). There is no reference to the ICO in the BBC article, and I don’t know what approach has been or is being taken to those issues either by HMCTS or the ICO. But I would be very interested in finding out.
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