HC Deb 24 March 2003 vol 402 cc92-3W
Mr. Watts

To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if she will make a statement on her plans to link the courts' computer systems in order to improve past bail records information. [104109]

Yvette Cooper

Links between the police and the Magistrates courts case management systems already exist in some areas. The implementation of NSPIS Case Preparation system (the police's new case management application), together with the implementation of a standard national software application in Magistrates' courts will extend these links across England and Wales over the next three years.

We plan to join together the existing and developing IT systems in a staged development, using an `information walkway' known as the Criminal Justice Exchange to link individual systems. It will enable the courts and other criminal justice agencies to share case data—including information relating to bail—electronically.

This is part of a major IT and business change programme over the next three years for which £834 million of new money has been provided in the SR2002 settlement for the CJS as a whole.