Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps the Government is taking help older people maintain access to services in a modernising court system.

Ensuring access to justice is a fundamental principle of the Government and judiciary’s £1bn reform programme to transform our courts and tribunals system. The reform programme aims to expand the ways users can resolve their justice needs, while maintaining and improving traditional methods for those who need them. We are designing the reformed services to be accessible for all, including older users, and to provide users with options on how they can interact with our services as well as access appropriate support, should they need to do so.

Many users will be able to benefit from new digital services and, if needed, will be able to seek telephone or face to face support to help them to use these. This ‘assisted digital’ support is currently in place for the ‘Application’ stage for our reformed services for Divorce, Civil Money Claims, Social Security & Child Support Tribunal, Probate and the Single Justice Service. Where assisted digital support is not appropriate or sufficient, users will continue to be able to use traditional methods, such as paper forms, which are also being improved and made more accessible.