Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to modernise the courts system.

We are investing £1.3bn to transform the justice system, introducing 21st Century technology and online services to increase access to justice, improve efficiency and modernise the courts.

We have already delivered eight digital services, allowing people to apply online for cases in immigration and asylum, divorce, probate, civil money claims, benefit decision appeals in the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal, and local authority child welfare applications in the Family Court. We are also rolling out a new digital system in the criminal courts which gives all parties involved in criminal cases access to case information and enabling magistrates' courts to handle minor offences in a quicker and easier way.

Having supported the rapid deployment of video-enabled court and tribunal hearings building on the early work of the programme, we are releasing a bespoke video hearings service, enabling fully remote and hybrid hearings to take place across all jurisdictions. Parties to cases and lawyers are able to attend hearings remotely where appropriate, saving time, effort and cost.

Reform is on track to complete in 2023 and will deliver further digitisation of services before closure. This will include delivering services for adoption, the Employment Tribunal, and other tribunals covering case types including special educational needs and mental health.

The digital reforms and simplified services are removing simple cases from court, cutting down unnecessary paperwork and helping some of the most vulnerable people facing difficult situations get justice as quickly as possible. This is also critical to enabling us to recover workloads in courts and tribunals which are still experiencing impacts from the pandemic.