The government’s non-committal response to a detailed report evaluating the year-long virtual courts pilot is disappointing. Though occasionally lapsing into mandarin-esque understatement and equivocation, the study is clear enough. Conceived as a straightforward way to save money, the scheme actually increased the cost of delivering criminal justice compared to the traditional court process.

Unsurprisingly, the set-up and running costs of the technology were high, and the process merely transferred part of the cost of the first appearance to the police. Justice was indifferently served, but (presumably) the equipment suppliers made a few quid.

Perhaps conscious that this was not a message ministers wanted to hear, the authors sugared the pill a little. They hazard that extending the use of the technology to other parts of the system, such as with witnesses and victims, might improve the economic case for its installation. But that would demand a much more extensive and detailed pilot at the very least, surely, thus ruling out any medium-term savings at all.

To us, the ‘killer’ sentence in the report reads: ‘The roll-out of virtual courts across London... would cost more than it would save over a 10-year period.’ And bear in mind too that we have not even touched here on the justified concerns of practitioners about the impact of the scheme on access to justice.