When news broke on August 8, 2025, that a critical IT bug in England and Wales’s court system had been concealed for years, it sent shockwaves through the legal and political establishment. At the heart of the scandal is the HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), whose case-management software—known variously as Judicial Case Manager, MyHMCTS, or CCD—had, according to a BBC investigation, been plagued by issues that caused evidence to go missing, be overwritten, or simply vanish from view in court files.
The fallout has been swift and severe. Alex Chalk KC, who led the Ministry of Justice as Lord Chancellor from April 2023 to July 2024, was kept in the dark about the problem even though, as he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “the 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.” Chalk described his reaction as “incredibly troubled,” adding, “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.”
The BBC’s reporting, corroborated by leaked internal documents, paints a troubling picture. The bug, which was present in software introduced as early as 2018, made some evidence—including medical information, contact details, and other crucial data—unavailable to judges, lawyers, and case workers. The Social Security and Child Support (SSCS) Tribunal, which handles benefit appeals, appears to have been the most affected, but the problem extended into family courts, employment tribunals, civil claims, and probate cases—essentially, the backbone of the British legal system for everyday citizens.
Perhaps most damning is the revelation that the problem was not only technical but also cultural. According to The Spectator, internal emails reviewed by the BBC suggested that HMCTS leadership was more concerned with the “severe reputational impact to HMCTS” than with the risk to the public or to the integrity of the justice system. “There is a culture of cover-ups,” one source told the BBC. “They’re not worried about risk to the public, they’re worried about people finding out about the risk to the public. It’s terrifying to witness.”
Sir James Munby, the former head of the High Court’s family division, didn’t mince words. Speaking to the BBC, he called the situation “a scandal” and “shocking.” He explained, “These hearings often decide the fate of people’s lives. An error could mean the difference between a child being removed from an unsafe environment or a vulnerable person missing out on benefits.”
Despite these grave concerns, HMCTS has maintained that “our internal investigation found no evidence that any case outcomes were affected as a result of these technical issues.” An HMCTS spokesperson emphasized the importance of digitization: “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.”
However, the BBC’s investigation found that the true extent of the data corruption was not fully understood by HMCTS. A leaked report acknowledged “large-scale” data breaches and stated that these should have been addressed “as soon as they were known.” Yet, it took several years for HMCTS to even react to the flaw, and repeated warnings from IT staff were reportedly ignored by senior management.
One employee, so alarmed by the scope of the internal investigation, filed a formal whistleblower complaint. The subsequent report, which was later leaked to the BBC, found that not only had the software’s design flaws been recognized internally, but that action to resolve the issues was delayed, allowing the problem to persist and potentially impact hundreds of pending cases.
The comparison to the notorious Horizon Post Office scandal has been repeated by several sources. When asked if the situation could be likened to that infamous miscarriage of justice, Chalk replied, “It could be.” The Horizon scandal saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused and convicted of fraud due to faulty IT, a parallel that has not gone unnoticed by legal observers and politicians alike.
The software at the center of the controversy was widely used by judges, lawyers, case workers, and even members of the public to manage evidence and track cases. Yet, because of the bug, some evidence was sometimes not visible as part of the uploaded case file to be used in court. The BBC reported that while the documents were technically present somewhere in the system, they were obscured from view—meaning that judges and parties might have made decisions based on incomplete information. HMCTS has insisted that “fail-safes” ensured parties and judges always had access to the documents they needed, but the lack of transparency and delayed response has left many unconvinced.
According to the BBC, the issue was discussed as far back as 2019 and definitively discovered in 2023, yet was not disclosed to the public, affected parties, or even senior government officials until the internal report was leaked and journalists began asking questions. The secrecy surrounding the affair has only deepened the sense of mistrust and frustration among those who rely on the courts for justice.
Chalk, for his part, has called for a “root and branch review” of the system, warning that the potential consequences of such failings are “unbelievably serious.” He noted that the bug could have impacted cases determining whether a child is taken into care or whether a vulnerable person receives the benefits to which they are entitled. “So unbelievably serious,” he repeated on air. “And, so the whistle blowers indicate, it could potentially have bled into other tribunals as well, whether it deals with divorce and so on.”
The episode has reignited debates about the digitization of public services and the capacity of the British state to manage complex IT systems. Critics argue that the drive to modernize must not come at the expense of transparency and accountability. “This is what the British state looks like; this is how it operates,” The Spectator observed, lamenting a “culture of ineptitude with the bureaucracy protecting itself against all transparency, against every attempt to hold the system and its people to account.”
As the dust settles, many are left wondering just how many more stories like this remain hidden in the machinery of government. For now, the HMCTS scandal stands as a stark warning of the risks posed by unchecked digitization and a lack of openness in institutions meant to serve the public.
