Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how much his Department has (a) budgeted for and (b) spent on software updates to legacy computer systems in each of the last three financial years.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Please see the figures for budget and spending by the Ministry of Justice and HMCTS.
The Ministry of Justice does not record its budgets and expenditure to a level of granularity that permits it to identify spend that is specifically for software updates to legacy computer systems.
The Ministry of Justice maintains a fund specifically for the reduction and eradication of technical debt – this fund focusses on improving and replacing legacy infrastructure and software applications; migrating business-critical applications from legacy hosting arrangements to the cloud, which is much more modern and secure; and bringing its digital and technology estate up to required standards.
The table below sets out the Ministry of Justice budget and expenditure of the Technical Debt fund for the past three full financial years – 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.
| Budget | Expenditure |
FY 20/21 | £15.08m | £19.17m |
FY 21/22 | £32.78m | £26.56m |
FY 22/23 | £67.64m | £60.32m |
Total: | £115.5m | £106.05m |
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the meeting held between the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice and Member for Llanelli on November 20th 2018, what progress his Department has made in developing an electronic card, by which a person can demonstrate they have power of attorney.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
My department continues to work on modernising how lasting powers of attorney (LPA) are created and used by members of the public. Since the meeting in 2018, the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) has launched its “Use a lasting power of attorney” service. This allows third parties such as banks and hospitals to check the details of an LPA digitally including who can legally act under the LPA. This removes the need for any physical LPA to be provided. Additionally, in July last year we published a consultation on modernising how LPAs are created and registered with the OPG. The consultation outlined proposals for how an LPA could be created digitally in the future. This work includes research with the people who make and use LPAs to understand what format they would want an LPA to exist in, in the future.
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of the forms on his Department's website is available in Welsh.
Answered by Mike Penning
There are 60 Ministry of Justice forms published on gov.uk. Of these, three are translated into the Welsh language, which is five percent of the total. This does not include forms from agencies or arms’ length bodies of the Ministry of Justice. We are committed to providing our forms in the Welsh language where it is clear there is demand.
Guidance for departments on the translation of documents for the Government website is provided by the Government Digital Service and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/welsh-language-on-gov-uk
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether it is his policy to allow members of the public to make an application for a cremation in Welsh.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Cremation (England and Wales) Regulations 2008 require that, in order for a cremation to proceed, the crematorium medical referee must scrutinise the application and associated medical or coroner forms before authorising a cremation.
An application made in Wales may be for a cremation in Wales or a cremation in England. A medical referee in Wales may not be a Welsh speaker, and a medical referee in England will almost certainly not be a Welsh speaker.
Applications in Wales must therefore be made in English, to make sure that the medical referee can understand and authorise the cremation in a timely manner wherever the cremation is to take place.