Ellie Reeves
Main Page: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and East Dulwich)Department Debates - View all Ellie Reeves's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Courts IT System
Ellie Reeves Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Lucy Frazer
As always, my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Justice Committee makes important points. I am pleased to clarify that the common platform is not affected—it is being trialled—and that in fact the reform programme in its totality is not affected by these issues. Our divorce and probate application systems are not affected. As I said, the point of reform is to ensure that these systems work in future—my hon. Friend referred to the need to ensure that our systems work—and we will be carrying out a rigorous evaluation of our court reform programme.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Prisons being issued urgent notifications, private probation services needing bailouts, trials collapsing because of disclosure failures, MOJ staff on strike over the failure to pay them the London living wage—and now the court system is in disarray. When will the Minister finally understand that the 40% real-terms cut to the MOJ budget since 2010 has consequences, and that austerity has left the justice system at breaking point?
Lucy Frazer
As I identified at the start, this issue was caused by an infrastructure failure in our supplier’s data centre. It is not the result of cuts. My Department received some funding in relation to the building of a prison in the recent Budget, and it received investment into the courts service and into its estates. We are investing £1 billion in our courts service.