The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has forked out nearly £7m on laptops and over £600,000 on mobile phones for staff, as experts warn of an increased risk of data breaches.
According to Freedom of Information (FOI), supplied to City AM by the think tank Parliament Street, the CPS has bought 4,648 laptops and 2,671 mobile phones for its staff over the last three years.
The average price of the laptops stood at £1,483, while the phones were £233 each.
The CPS employs over 7,000 across England and Wales. Its budget for 2023-24 was £681.6m.
Arkadiy Ukolov, co-founder and CEO of City tech firm Ulla Technology, stated, “For every device handed out to an employee, organisations like the CPS need oversight over how they are being used.”
Ukolov noted that the legal sector handles vast amounts of case-sensitive data, which requires secure encryption and compliance.
Tech chief Andy Ward, senior vice president of Absolute Security, added that “more devices mean more risk”.
“When laptops are handed out to facilitate remote and hybrid working, they must ensure robust cybersecurity infrastructure is in place not only to prevent but respond and recover in a timely manner in the event of a breach,” Ward explained.
He added: “These attacks are a case of when, not if, so having cyber resilience protocols in place that can help isolate compromised devices and secure and restore them is critical to protecting data.”
This comes after M&S’s online orders have been down all week after the retailer suffered a ‘cyber incident’ on Tuesday. Co-op was also forced to shut parts of its IT systems after it was confronted with an attempted hack this week.
The revelation of the tech bill comes after many civil servants were encouraged, and in some departments ordered, to go back to the office, with a 60 per cent in-person attendance target.
The order faced backlash from civil servants, leading to 4,000 industrial actions being initiated in January.
Commenting on the FOI data, Patrick Sullivan, CEO of Parliament Street, stated, “The government’s 60 per cent office working target should be raised with immediate effect. Adding, “Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for part-time prosecutors and their lavish lifestyle choices.”
The criminal justice system is currently at breaking point, with endless case backlogs and overfilled prisons. The problem is linked to a large number of prosecutors, as criminal barristers leave the profession in large numbers due to low salaries.
The UK government has made the justice system a priority, promising to “repair the justice system.” The Chancellor revealed in her Autumn Budget of an extra £2.3bn for prison expansion.
