Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the ability of unrepresented defendants to access their case files from the Common Platform.

In both the magistrates' court and the crown court, unrepresented defendants do not have access to IT heritage systems and the same principle applies to Common Platform. The prosecution has a responsibility for serving all relevant materials, whether this is on paper or, where appropriate, using other media and they must also keep a record of what is served on the defendant. This extends to CCTV evidence, which is viewable to users of Common Platform. As unrepresented defendants do not have access to the Platform, alternative arrangements are made to enable the defendant to view the material being relied upon – e.g. providing a copy of the recording on disc.