Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Scott of Bybrook on 4 January (HL11555), (1) how much funding has been made available from the budget of the Reform Programme, and (2) how much money has been allocated from Administrative Data Research UK, for implementing the recommendations of the report by Dr Natalie Byrom Making the most of HMCTS data: HMCTS’ full response and update to Dr Byrom’s recommendations, published on 9 October 2020.

Dr Byrom’s report makes a number of important recommendations which HMCTS is in the process of implementing. Because HMCTS’s response to the recommendations is integrated into the wider work on reviewing data use and management, spending is included in departmental and programme budgets. As such, it is not possible to disaggregate work on the recommendations from other work on data. In addition to spending from these departmental and programme budgets, HMCTS has allocated £4.92m of reform funding specifically to implementing our Data Strategy in 2020/2021.HMCTS budgets for future years have not yet been set.

ADR UK awarded MoJ a grant of £2.89m over three years for the data-linking programme Data First to facilitate and promote research in the area of justice. This work was commissioned for overall strategic aims of ADR UK and Data First and not specifically to address the recommendations from the Byrom report.