PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Court Reporting Data - 10 February 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I am committed, as are this Government, to greater transparency in our justice system. I am also committed to putting the dignity of victims first. As Courts Minister, I have a concern that people should know what goes on in our courts. It is a way of enhancing transparency and of informing and educating the public, and that is why His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has made and continues to make information available to accredited journalists so that they can keep the public informed about what is taking place in our courts.

In 2020, a company called Courtsdesk entered into an arrangement with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to conduct a pilot providing a new service. That agreement, made under the previous Government, was essentially to take some of the data that we routinely provide—and continue to provide—to journalists, and to re-provide it in a more accessible and easier to search form.

HMCTS was working to expand and improve the service by creating a new data licence agreement with Courtsdesk and others to expand access to justice. It was in the course of making that arrangement with Courtsdesk that data protection issues came to light. What has arisen is that this private company has been sharing private, personal and legally sensitive information with a third-party AI company, including potentially the addresses and dates of birth of defendants and victims. That is a direct breach of our agreement with Courtsdesk, which the Conservatives negotiated.

I believe that everybody in this House would agree that that agreement should be upheld. The Government take our data protection responsibilities seriously. It is for that reason that we decided to stop sharing data with Courtsdesk, a company that was prepared to put victims’ personal data at risk. We instructed it to remove that data from its digital platform. This is about preserving dignity for those who are in our justice system, be they those accused of crime or victims going through the court process. I know that the whole House would agree that that is incredibly important.

Let me be clear: the cessation of our agreement with Courtsdesk does not change the information available to the public about what carries on in our courts, nor does it change the information available to journalists. I recognise that the sort of service that Courtsdesk provided was useful for journalists, because it collated the information and presented it neatly. It is for that reason that officials in my Department are continuing to work, as we had always planned to do, on an alternative platform that allows us to make the information available, but to maintain the guardrails on data protection. I hope to update the House on that in coming weeks. As I conclude, this decision—

I am afraid that the bombast we have just heard is not just inaccurate but dangerous, because it suggests that there is anything like a restriction on open justice. Let me be absolutely clear: there has been no deletion of any court lists. [Interruption.] Excuse me. There has been no deletion of any court lists, which is the nature of the data that has been provided.

Let us be absolutely clear: we had an arrangement with Courtsdesk, which we accept provides a useful service. [Interruption.] What Courtsdesk did, which the shadow Minister does not seem to think is a problem, is to pass that information on in breach of the agreement—no doubt for commercial purposes—to an AI company. That information included defendants’ addresses and dates of birth. I do not think anyone in this House would think that such things should be provided to anybody other than accredited journalists, yet they were provided to an AI company.

We then asked Courtsdesk to delete the information that it held. As of yesterday, I understand that it still has not done so. It accepts that it has acted in breach of its agreement. It threatened the Ministry of Justice with legal action, which it has not chosen to take forward. We are saying that when a company acts in breach of an agreement, putting vulnerable people and parties at risk, it is very serious. I take data protection seriously, but there has been no obstruction to journalists being able to access through the usual channels the lists that we are talking about. That access remains open today, and it remains open to journalists to contact HMCTS.

Indeed, we want to put this system on a securer footing with the necessary guardrails. [Interruption.] I will repeat, because the shadow Minister is muttering through my entire response, that no one has deleted any court records. Everything that he refers to in relation to serious sexual historic crimes remains accessible. Case law remains accessible, and the court lists remain accessible.

Open justice is vital, but I will not have a wild west of private companies acting in breach of agreements with Government and passing sensitive data on to third-party AI companies. That will not do, and the shadow Minister knows that if he were in my position, it would not have been acceptable to him either.

My hon. Friend has asked a very good question. It is vital for people to know what goes on in our courts, and local reporting of what happens there matters to wider society and, indeed, to our democracy. We recognise that Courtsdesk provided a useful service for journalists in collating information and presenting it in an accessible way, and that is what we want to be able to maintain, while at the same time safeguarding people’s data and putting it on a proper licensing footing.

On the timeline, we aim to initiate that licensing arrangement and make it available to companies more widely so that, next month, there is even more accessibility. We are very close to that, but what I will not abide is a flagrant breach of the agreement that we had with Courtsdesk and the sharing of sensitive data in a way that is irresponsible. I want the data to be available to responsible journalists to use responsibly, and that is exactly what we are getting on with.

I want to make it absolutely clear that accredited journalists continue—as they have throughout—to have access to court information that they need, directly from individual magistrates courts and tribunal services, via either the court and tribunal hearings service, which is a new digital system, or the gov.uk website. I do recognise the utility of what Courtsdesk provided, but the company was clearly not acting in a responsible way. When we approached its representatives about the breach of its agreement with HMCTS, they accepted that they had breached it and then threatened the MOJ with litigation, which is not an appropriate way to behave if one is trying to co-operate and get things on to a sound and steady footing.

Let me also be absolutely clear about the timeline. All magistrates and court lists, and the accompanying case summarisation data, will be available from the court and tribunal hearings service from the end of March 2026. I want to put this on a stable footing so that journalists have ready access, because I accept that the information must be made easily available to them, in a responsible but properly licensed fashion. As I have said, that work will be made public and the licences made available from March.

We have to do this in a responsible way. We have to balance the very real needs of open justice—which I readily accept, and to which the Government are committed—with data protection, particularly when it comes to the vulnerable victims who are at the heart of this.

The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that the report to the ICO has not yet been made. I raised the matter with our data officer, and the conclusion—the advice that I was given—was that it did not meet the threshold for an ICO referral. I have asked for that to be looked at again, but what is clear, and Courtsdesk accepted this fact, is that it breached the agreement by passing this material to an AI company. That is not a responsible thing to do with people’s private addresses and other sensitive data relating to individuals through which those individuals can be identified and which are not subject to the same reporting restrictions which, of course, journalists abide by. Let me be absolutely clear with the House: the sort of service that Courtsdesk provides is one that we want to replicate, but we want it to be on a stable footing with the necessary data protection guardrails, and that is what we are putting in place. If Courtsdesk had engaged with the Ministry of Justice and HMCTS in a responsible fashion, we would not be in the position that we are in today.

The fact is that, all along, journalists have retained the ability to obtain information. That is the critical point. This is about court lists, not court records. In respect of court lists, for all courts, journalists throughout have been able to engage with the information in the same way as they were able to do pre-2020, pre-Courtsdesk. They can get that information, and they can continue to report what is happening in our courts.

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman agrees that this is a matter of concern, although it is clearly not a concern that is shared by the Front Benchers in his party. Our understanding is that some 700 individual cases, at least, were shared with the AI company. We have sought to understand what more may have been shared and who else may have been put at risk, but the mere fact that the agreement was breached in that way is incredibly serious. That is why all this needs to be put on a much more licence-secure and regulatorily secure footing.

The hon. Lady is right, in that the original agreement that was reached between Courtsdesk and the previous Government made it clear that there should not be further sharing of the data with additional parties. It is one thing to share the data with accredited journalists who are subject to their own codes and who are expected to adhere to reporting restrictions, but Courtsdesk breached that agreement by sharing the information with an AI company. That is simply irresponsible, and when it came to light, I took the decision—I did not take it lightly, but I certainly remain confident in that decision—to cease giving Courtsdesk access unless and until it, or any other party, showed that it could use that information responsibly. Open justice is very important, but such information should not be shared with an AI company in breach of the agreement that exists with Government.

The right hon. Gentleman will know that I am all for being pragmatic and having dispute resolution, but, as I have said, in the course of our trying to get to the bottom of what has happened, litigation has been threatened, so it is very difficult to do that. What I want to do is move forward, and potentially with Courtsdesk if it can show that it is a responsible actor, which at present it is not doing.

Two things need to happen. First, we have all the power and all the data in a single company, and I do not think that is healthy. I think that everyone in the House who believes in an open market would favour a tendering process that opens up the potential for different parties to gain licences, and in that way we can make the information accessible to different companies.

Secondly, the licence agreements need to be strengthened so that we do not see a repeat of what we have seen here—a sharing of data where it should not go—and we need to have guardrails in place. The nature of the agreement that was agreed under the previous Government was too informal, too baggy and too loose for my liking. In fact, it is partly what has allowed this situation to happen, which is why I want to put things on a better footing. We will not take ages; I have said that we will do this by March, and we are getting on with it. In the meantime, it is a wild west. We simply cannot have companies acting in breach of the agreement, sticking personal, sensitive information belonging to victims and defendants alike into an AI bot, and passing it on to an AI company that will do who knows what with it.

Let me start by saying that this Government are committed to tackling grooming gangs, punishing offenders and protecting children. The grooming gangs scandal is one of the most heinous crimes of our time, but allow me to repeat this: it is fundamentally incorrect to say that court records are being deleted. Court records remain completely intact, and will only be deleted in line with the general data protection regulation and record retention policies. The data that we are talking about here is data that a private company, Courtsdesk, has been asked to delete because it has failed to demonstrate that it is using that data responsibly. The data includes only magistrates court lists and outcomes, not the transcripts of which the hon. Gentleman speaks—data that Courtsdesk is not entitled to hold. The sort of data that he is concerned about remains, and those who need to access it for investigative purposes or otherwise can do so through the usual channels. Let us not conflate that with the data in question here.

I share the hon. Lady’s concern regarding the victims, whom we so often fail to centre in our discussions in this House. Let me be absolutely clear: as a Government, we have demonstrated time and again our commitment to open justice, whether that is through increasing the provision of free transcripts of sentencing remarks to all victims on request, introducing audio recording in magistrates courts, or ensuring that the judiciary allow more judgments and decisions to be published. To be absolutely clear, the data shared with Courtsdesk was listing data and, in some cases, the outcomes of those cases.

Of course listing data is important, and of course it is important that it is accurate. By the way, it is also important that such data is not shared unlawfully with third parties that are not entitled to it. We continue to make that information available to journalists in the same way as before 2020. A journalist working in the field can access that information from HMCTS if they make a request, and it will be passed to them in the usual way. We are seeking to open that up further and to put it on a stable footing, which will remove the wild west that appears to have emerged.

I regard the data breach of the agreement as serious, and I referred it to the data officer at the MOJ. That is the conclusion they have reached, and I have accepted their advice. As I said, I have asked them to conduct a further review in the light of further information that has come to light, just as we have asked Courtsdesk for further information. The information came to light because Courtsdesk admitted that it had been inputting and sharing this data with an AI company, in breach of the agreement. We have to get to the bottom of that, but it is so important that we tighten up the licensing agreements and make court lists available to more companies, so that journalists can continue to access the information in a way that is safe for defendants, safe for victims, and safe for anyone who participates in the court process.

I want to be really clear that the data held by Courtsdesk is not an archive of criminal court case files. A number of Members have mentioned the importance of criminal court case records, which are held in a variety of places, not least the National Archives. They continue to remain available. The court lists, which I accept are important, continue to be available to the public—a member of the public can look them up now. Enhanced listing, which has a bit more information, remains open to journalists. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is important to have transparency and open justice, and for reporters to have the ability to expose what goes on in our courts. That is why I want to make the data open to more people, but we will put it on a safer footing to ensure that data breaches like this do not occur again in the future.