§ Lord Lester of Herne Hillasked Her Majesty's Government:
What programme of computerisation in the High Court of Justice and in the county courts will be necessary to implement the proposals made by Lord Woolf in his final report on access to justice; and what is the target timetable for putting this programme into effect.
§ The Lord ChancellorThe question concerns a matter which has been assigned to the Court Service under the terms of its framework document. I have therefore asked the Chief Executive to respond.
Letter to Lord Lester of Herne Hill from the Chief Executive of the Court Service, Mr. M. D. Huebner, dated 19 March 1997.
The Lord Chancellor has asked me to reply to your Question about computerisation in the High Court and county courts. A joint scoping study is being carried out by the Court Service and Electronic Data Systems (under the private finance initiative) to identify the computer systems necessary to support the proposals made by Lord Woolf. Recommendations from the scoping study will be made in April 1997. The appropriate computer systems should be in place when the reforms are implemented in October 1998.