Courts' IT system gets £4m upgrade - to speak Welsh

Welsh Language Act requires court communications to be bilingual but Libra system only prints in English

The Welsh Assembly says all communications must be bilingual

The Ministry of Justice is spending £4m upgrading a Magistrates' Courts IT system to issue notices in Welsh.

The Libra case management computer system – which doubled in price from £200m to £444m and was delayed by more than seven years – currently only issues court summonses in English.

The project, begun in 1998 and only completed in December 2008, was designed to create a more efficient standardised national system for Magistrates’ Courts.

But a parliamentary question from Jenny Willott MP revealed that the system does not include a bilingual version for issuing court summonses in Welsh, forcing Welsh speakers to apply specially for translations.

A bilingual version of Libra should be ready by September 2009 at a further cost of £4m, according to Wilmott.

"It beggars belief that the government simply forgot to include the Welsh language in the contract," she said.

“Fixing this problem is going to add further to the taxpayers’ bill for this shambolic IT project and will leave Welsh speakers having to ask for special translations until September."

The system must be upgraded to comply with the Welsh Language Act of 1993, which gave Welsh speakers the right to speak Welsh in court proceedings should they wish, and obliged all public-sector organisations to treat Welsh and English on an equal basis in communications.