Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 12 March to Question 130227, on courts: video conferencing, what assessment his Department has made of how representative the Tax Tribunal is of other courts and tribunals.

HMCTS has not assessed the tax chamber, or any jurisdiction, to be representative of other courts and tribunals. We recognise that it is in the nature of tribunals that each chamber is different, with different participants, procedures and challenges. We also know that no two cases are the same which is why it is always for the judge to determine which cases are suitable for video hearings.

In consultation with the judiciary, the tax chamber has been selected as an appropriate place to begin piloting fully video hearings in as the types of hearings included in this pilot are reasonably straight forward and, due to an increasing amount of appellants initiating their appeal online, it is expected that participants have a reasonable level of digital capability. The pilot will allow HMCTS to learn and establish some basic principles around remote attendance and the new technology that has been developed