The court service accused it of covering the bug, which disappeared the evidence

In England and Wales, the body running court has been accused of a cover-up, after a leaked report it was found that it took several years to react to the IT bug, which disappeared, disappeared or lost lost.

Sources within the HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCT) say that as a result, judges in the Civil, Family and Tribunal Courts must have made decisions in cases when evidence was incomplete.

The internal report, leaked for the BBC, said that HMCT does not know the entire limit of data corruption, including whether it affected cases, as it did not conduct a comprehensive investigation.

It was also found that judges and lawyers were not informed, as HMCTS management decided that it would “cause more damage”.

HMCT says that its internal investigation found no evidence that “as a result of these technical issues, the result was affected”.

However, former head of the High Court’s Family Division, Sir James Munbi said the BBC’s position was “shocking” and “A Scandal”.

The bug was found in the case-management software used by the HMCT, Ministry of Justice (MOJ) agency, which administer several courts in England and Wales and tribunal in UK.

Software – Known as a judicial case manager, myhmcts or CCD – is used to track evidence and track cases before the courts. It is used by judges, lawyers, case workers and members of the public.

The documents viewed by the BBC showed that it became unclean from looking at the data, which means that medical records, contact details and other evidences were never seen as part of the case files used in the court.

Social Security and Child Support (SSCs) Tribunal – which handles the appeal of profit – is believed to have been affected the most.

Sources have told the BBC that Bugs has also influenced the case management software used by other courts – including family, divorce, employment, civil funds claims and probate.

“This hearing often decides the fate of people’s lives,” Sir James Munbi told the BBC. “An error may mean that a child is being removed from an unsafe environment or a weak person is disappearing from profit.”

The BBC has spoken to several different sources within HMCT, comparing the position for the horizon post office scandals, where the authorities tried to suppress the evidence of the system’s flaws.

One says that the design of the software had “normal horror”, introduced by HMCT in 2018, claiming that they claim that “was not designed properly or strongly” and had a long history of data loss.

Another says that despite repeated warnings from the agency’s IT employees, the senior management had a general reluctance to “accept or face the reality” of the situation.

“There is a culture of cover-up,” one told the BBC. “They are not worried about the risk for the public, they are concerned about the risk to the public about the risk. This is terrible to the witness.”

When asked, Moj told us that many organizations were involved in the design and development of software, but did not supply a list.

The BBC has seen documents from the MOJ (obtained through freedom of information requests), including emails where the severity of the SSCS issue was discussed.

A briefing prepared for the chief executive of HMCTS – dated 2024 – The risk for action was initially classified as “high”, in which the possibility of adversely affected on the possibility of court results was evaluated as “very probability”, resulting in “serious reputed effects for HMCTS”.

However, an initial manual investigation by a team within HMCTS reviewed only one of the most recent three -month value of cases listened by the SSCS Tribunal, even though the bug was considered in the system for many years.

Of the 609 cases known as potential issues, only 109 (17%) were selected for further investigation. Among them, only one was said to have “potentially significant impact”.

Briefing suggested that the standard court process would mean that employees would look at any discrepancies and correct them manually.

Subsequently, it was decided that the risk was low for all cases and “no other check” was required.

Sources within HMCT argue that, given the nature of the problem, a snapshot of three months of data was “completely insufficient”.

His concerns are shared by a prominent IT security expert, Surrey University Professor Alan Woodward, who has worked for the Government of UK and worked on issues including forensic computing.

,[HMCTS] He investigated on a limited set of cases, “, they say.” To say that he found that these defects have no effect, there is no meaning to me. ,

Documents suggest that an employee of HMCT was very concerned, raising a formal scalp complaint, which inspired another internal investigation.

It was led by a senior IT professional from the prison service and a detailed report as a result, distributed internal in November 2024.

This is the report that has been leaked to the BBC.

It was established to “establish” facts on data loss and data corruption issues affecting social security and child aid tribunals.

Investigators interviewed 15 witnesses including software engineers and developers, and reviewed internal documents, such as the incident log and diary entries.

It should have been addressed to “large -scale” data violations that should have been addressed to “as he was known”. However, the report stated that HMCT took several years to react despite several warnings from senior technical staff since 2019.

Investigators concluded that because HMCT did not conduct a comprehensive investigation, the entire limit of data corruption was still unknown, affecting the results of the case.

The report states that data loss incidents are raised against the IT system used by the civil, family and tribunal courts.

The concerns raised in the leaked report resonated the people raised by those who spoke to the BBC.

The sources inside HMCT express concern that the missing evidence may be undesken.

“It is quite a frightening possibility,” one told the BBC, “This information is lost, no notice, and there is a abortion of justice. I think the biggest concern is.”

In family courts, thousands of documents disappeared due to a separate IT defect, saying sources.

In an example, it is claimed that more than 4,000 documents disappeared from hundreds of public family law cases due to a mistake – including cases of child protection.

The BBC understands that this bug was discovered in 2023 and may exist for a few years. We have been told that it has been resolved since then, but no investigation was done to establish a possible impact on the results of the case.

We asked Moj whether any emergency child safety matters have been affected.

This did not answer this question.

In a statement, a spokesman for HMCTS told the BBC that “the parties and judges involved in these matters always had access to documents they needed”. It vowed to “press” with digitization, as it was “important” to bring courts and tribunals in the modern era.

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