UK Politics

An IT bug causing “technical issues” within the body running courts in England and Wales is “unbelievably serious” and could be compared to the Post Office Horizon scandal, a former lord chancellor has said.The BBC has reported that it took HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) several years to react to the bug, which is said to have caused evidence to go missing, be overwritten or appear lost, resulting in judges in civil, family and tribunal courts making rulings on cases when evidence was potentially incomplete.HMCTS said there is no evidence to suggest any case outcomes were affected as a result of the issues.The bug was found in case-management software used by HMCTS and the Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) Tribunal, which handles benefit appeals, is thought to have been most affected, the BBC said.Referred to as Judicial Case Manager, MyHMCTS or CCD, the BBC said the software is used to manage evidence and track cases, and is used by judges, lawyers, case workers and members of the public.Documents seen by the BBC show the bug caused data to be obscured from view, meaning some evidence was sometimes not visible as part of case files used in court.The BBC said a leaked internal report said HMCTS did not know the full extent of the data corruption, including whether or how it had affected cases.Alex Chalk, former lord chancellor and former justice secretary, said what has happened is “incredibly serious” and could have involved cases which determine whether a child is taken into care.“So unbelievably serious. And, so the whistle blowers indicate, it could potentially have bled into other tribunals as well, whether it deals with divorce and so on.“And the thing that is so troubling is that this report evidently got on to the desk of the senior leadership of HMCTS in March 2024 when I was in office, and it was never brought to my attention.“And I am incredibly troubled by that, because any lord chancellor, of any stripe, if they discover that there’s potentially a situation in the courts which is leading to injustice, then you will immediately want to investigate that, and yet in effect that was covered up and I’m afraid I think that is extremely serious,” Mr Chalk told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.The BBC said several sources within HMCTS have likened the situation to the Horizon Post Office scandal.Mr Chalk was asked on the Radio 4 Today programme if what has happened could be compared to the Post Office scandal, and he said: “It could be.”An HMCTS spokesperson said: “Our internal investigation found no evidence that any case outcomes were affected as a result of these technical issues.“The digitisation of our systems is vital to bring courts and tribunals into the modern era and provide quicker, simpler access to justice for all those who use our services.“We will continue to press ahead with our important modernisation.”It is understood that while the bug resulted in some documents not being accessible to users on the digital platform, they were in fact always present on the system.It is also understood that because of a number of “fail-safes”, parties and judges involved in these cases always had access to the documents they needed. More

The homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned hours after she was accused of raising the rent at her east London townhouse by £700 per month just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended.In a letter to the prime minister she said that remaining in the role would be “a distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.Ms Ali had been facing calls to quit over her handling of the rental property, with shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake accusing her of “staggering hypocrisy”. Rushanara Ali has resigned as homelessness minister More

Rachel Reeves has been given an inflation warning by the Bank of England, as it cut interest rates to their lowest level in two years but forecast months of sharp price rises driven by higher food prices.Days after the chancellor was warned of a £50bn black hole in the government’s finances, the Bank said Ms Reeves’s national insurance hike and the rise in the minimum wage were helping to push up the cost of the supermarket shop. There was relief for borrowers, as the interest rate was cut to 4 per cent. But the Bank said headline inflation would accelerate to 4 per cent by September, while inflation on food is set to hit 5.5 per cent between now and Christmas – putting a squeeze on household budgets.Chancellor Rachel Reeves has welcomed the rate cut More

Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali is facing calls to resign over her handling of a rental property, following reports she raised the rent at her east London townhouse by £700 weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended.Shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake accused the Labour minister of “staggering hypocrisy”, saying: “Rushanara Ali has been somebody who’s obviously a government minister in charge of homelessness. She’s spoken out about exploiting tenants, about providing more protections to tenants.”You can’t say those things, then do the opposite in practice, as a landlord. She’s got to resign.”He said the conduct appeared to be “unethical, not illegal” but “we can’t just say one thing and do another.”Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali is facing calls to resign over her handling of a rental property (David Woolfall/UK Parliament) More

Britain has not seen poverty this bad for more than half a century, Gordon Brown has warned, urging Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the two-child benefit cap at the next budget. The former prime minister and Labour chancellor – who said “we are dealing with a divided Britain” and a “social crisis” – backed reforms to gambling taxes in order to generate the £3.2bn needed to scrap the cap. Mr Brown said the gambling industry is “under taxed”, throwing his weight behind a report from The Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR) which said that around half a million children could be lifted out of poverty through the reforms. Former prime minister Gordon Brown has backed the IPPR’s report More

The first migrants who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel have been detained under the new “one in, one out” deal with France, the prime minister has confirmed. The first detentions came after people arrived in Dover on Wednesday, the first day the pilot scheme came into force.The agreement, announced by the prime minister in a joint press conference with Emmanuel Macron last month, means that any adult migrant who crosses the Channel will now be at risk of return if their claim for asylum is considered inadmissible.People thought to be migrants scramble to board a small boat near Wimereux in France in July More

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has revealed the case of Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl caused her to lose faith in God.Mrs Badenoch said she was “never that religious” while growing up but “believed there was a God” and “would have defined myself as a Christian apologist”.But this changed in 2008 when she read reports that Fritzl had imprisoned and repeatedly raped his daughter, Elisabeth, in his basement over 24 years.Mrs Badenoch, whose maternal grandfather was a Methodist minister, told the BBC: “I couldn’t stop reading this story. And I read her account, how she prayed every day to be rescued.“And I thought, I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered. I was praying to have good grades, my hair should grow longer, and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn’t miss something.“It’s like, why were those prayers answered and not this woman’s prayers? And it just, it was like someone blew out a candle.”Badenoch said she was “never that religious” growing up but would have defined herself “as a Christian apologist” More

Around half a million children could be lifted out of poverty through reforms to UK gambling laws, a leading think tank has found.The Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR) is urging the government to look at measures which could raise £3.2 billion from changes to how gambling is taxed.This would be the amount of funding needed to scrap the two-child limit and benefit cap, a new report from the group finds, which would lift 500,000 children out of poverty.Eliminating these two policies would be “the most effective single step” the government could take to reduce child poverty, it adds.There are now around 4.5 million children living in poverty in the UK (PA) More