The Ministry of Justice has announced that it has ordered the deletion of what has been described as the largest archive of court reporting data, prompting concern from journalists that obtaining information about court hearings may become more difficult.

The action concerns ‘Courtsdesk’, which is described on its website as “a ground-breaking digital web portal into the criminal courts of the UK, built under a pilot with permission from HM Courts and Tribunals Service, the Ministry of Justice and the Judiciary to make data on all prosecutions in England and Wales available to the news media in near real-time, with search, filters, tracking and alerts”. Some 1,500 journalists are said to have used the service,  described by some as an “indispensable tool” that brings together previously hard-to-discover information about the criminal courts into one centralised, accessible, and up-to-date portal.

However, in November last year HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) issued a cessation notice to Courtsdesk citing an “unauthorised sharing” of court data. This prompted the former justice minister who approved the pilot for Courtsdesk to call for the decision to be reversed, but the Government refused.

The issue was raised by way of an urgent question in the House of Commons last week. The Minister for Courts and Legal Services, Sarah Sackman, explained that the decision followed the discovery that Courtsdesk had “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”. As a result of this activity – which, she said, breached HMCTS’ agreement with Courtsdesk – the Government instructed the platform to delete the data.

The Minister acknowledged the value of the service for journalists, and added that the Ministry of Justice is continuing to work on an alternative platform that would be able to collect and present relevant information in a similar fashion. She also emphasised that, contrary to some reports, “no one has deleted any court records” and 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”.

To read the Hansard report of the Urgent Question, click here.