§ Lord Lester of Herne Hillasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by the Lord Filkin on 6 October (WA 9), what negative impact the Government's decision not to allocate funds to modernise the civil and family courts as part of the 2002 spending review will have on the way in which the components of the modernisation programme can be implemented and the time scale of that programme. [HL5022]
344WA
§ Lord FilkinMy Answer to the earlier question on this issue explained that the investment available in the current spending period, £75 million, will allow us to improve the speed and quality of work in the civil and family courts and reduce unnecessary delays caused by manual working practices.
Focusing the available investment on the most appropriate courts we will have a positive impact on the users of civil and family courts. We will install a modern IT infrastructure into a large number of civil sites. The targeted sites will include all care centres, all trial centres, the principal civil and family courts plus a number of sites across circuits to ensure a fair geographical distribution. This is in addition to the 61 sites included in the criminal infrastructure programme and will capture 80 per cent of all civil business. This will enable court users to access the court by use of email and we intend to develop a possession online service for housing cases.
As I have previously explained, I am not yet in a position to make a formal announcement about other individual modernisation projects, which remain at various stages of planning. All projects will go through a rigorous internal evaluation to ensure they contribute to our public service agreements.