Court Reporting Data

Commons Urgent Question

The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House of Commons on Tuesday 10 February.

“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”.

My Lords, the Courtsdesk court reporting data has been a great success in providing access to data from our courts. It has been reported that about 1,500 journalists have used the platform. It has proved particularly important in collating information about grooming gangs and in properly investigating that terrible issue. It would be extremely damaging to the transparency of our justice system if that service was to be extinguished.

Various excuses have been advanced by the Minister in the other place, despite her having announced in July of last year that the agreement with Courtsdesk would be continued. I highlight two of the excuses put forward. First, there is the allegation of a data breach. We now know that the Ministry of Justice data protection officer concluded, following investigation of that report, that there was no basis for a report to the Information Commissioner. Does the Minister agree with her department’s data protection officer? Secondly, there was an allegation of the sharing of data with a third-party AI company—I use the term “third party” advisedly. The data platform had contracted with an AI firm to carry out sub-processing in terms of an agreement. Does the Minister agree that, under Article 4(10) of the general data protection regulation, someone carrying out processing in terms of such an agreement is not to be regarded as a third party for the purposes of data protection?

My Lords, I am in the happy position of being able to reassure your Lordships’ House that there is no cover-up or conspiracy. The facts are as follows. Courtsdesk, a commercial company, was given copies of the data held in magistrates’ courts’ registers for one purpose only: to share it with bona fide journalists. However, Courtsdesk then shared it with a third-party company without asking or even telling the Ministry of Justice. This data contained sensitive information about both defendants and victims.

When the Ministry of Justice found out that Courtsdesk had done this, it was less than transparent with us, at which point the Government did what any responsible Government would have done: we stopped sending copies of the data to Courtsdesk and required it to remove the copies it still had from its platform. I reassure your Lordships’ House that the original data has always been retained by the Ministry of Justice, and no records have been deleted or lost.

My Lords—

My Lords, this is a 10-minute Urgent Question, so questions must be brief. We will now move on to the Lib Dems.

My Lords, we are all committed to open justice, but so we are to the protection of sensitive personal data. Minister Sackman told the Commons yesterday, as has the Minister here, that Courtsdesk had been sharing with an AI company, no doubt for commercial purposes, personal data of defendants and victims, including full names, personal addresses and birth dates. Minister Sackman said that at least 700 individual cases were involved in that direct breach of contract by Courtsdesk, which Courtsdesk has accepted was a breach.

I suggest that we accept both Ministers’ accounts as accurate, as, notably, did Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis, who, unlike his Front Bench—and indeed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen—rightly described this as a “cause of great concern”. How and when do the Government propose to replace Courtsdesk with an alternative provider? Meanwhile, can the Minister say how HMCTS will deliver accurate information in a more easily accessible and digestible form? By all accounts, journalists are currently finding the MOJ’s presentation of data to be fragmented, impractical and difficult to navigate.

My Lords, first, I reassure your Lordships’ House that all journalists can access the information in exactly the same way as they could through Courtsdesk—it is just a slightly more complicated method: they have to go through HMCTS. The point about Courtsdesk was that it provided a slightly more convenient method, but there is no material that journalists could get then that they cannot get now.

Secondly, the agreement with Courtsdesk, which was a licensing agreement rather than a contract, was entered into by the previous Government as a pilot, which is why it applied to magistrates’ courts only. This Government decided that it might be better to make it available to more than one commercial company. We are in the process of looking at new licensing agreements, which lots of companies can bid for if they wish to, including Courtsdesk if it would like to do so. Anybody who can reassure us that they will treat our data with the respect and dignity that victims and defendants deserve will probably get that licence.

My Lords, I know my noble friend the Minister will agree that it was utterly unacceptable for the company concerned to release personal information about vulnerable victims and witnesses without their permission or the permission of the department. As she knows, I am not a lawyer, but does she consider this to be a breach of the contract made with the previous Government by the company concerned?

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. In fact, there was no contract; it was a licensing agreement. Our view is that there was a clear breach of the licensing agreement, and that is why we were concerned. The real issue is Courtsdesk’s lack of candour with us when this came to our attention. If there was no problem, why did Courtsdesk not ask us about it or even tell us that that was what it was doing?

My Lords, it is worth saying that there has been a substantive rebuttal by the CEO of Courtsdesk, to which I understand the Government have not responded. I have no vested interest in this issue, but it is a matter of fact that Courtsdesk has gone to extensive lengths to protect victims’ personal data and ensure that it was handled responsibly and securely. This included working only with security-cleared engineers and building its AI test features in an encrypted sandbox environment, hosted in the EU, that is automatically and permanently deleted every 24 hours. Is it not the case that there has been a misunderstanding, and that this company has been treated quite shabbily by the Government?

Absolutely not. The first thing I would say in reply to the rebuttal put up very recently by the chief executive of Courtsdesk—it went up during my meeting with officials earlier this morning to discuss this issue—is, they would say that, wouldn’t they? Secondly, if there was nothing wrong with this, why did they not ask us and tell us they were doing it?

My Lords, while I commend the MoJ for doing what departments do not always do—policing these contracts properly—is there an argument, given the importance of this information and of making it accessible to journalists, but also of protecting sensitive data, for the department developing an in-house function capable of sorting this out, with a panel of journalists and others to help devise the scheme?

It is a very good question. In fact, that already exists in part. There is something known as CaTH, which deals with listing information in relation to civil courts and tribunals, and a criminal court listing service is going to be added to it in March. The thing about the information Courtsdesk had is that it went a bit further than that. It would, for example, give the charges; it would say what the outcome was; it would give what the sentence was. We accept entirely that journalists need and ought to have that information, but only journalists, because, first, journalists are familiar with the contempt of court rules and know what they can and cannot do. Secondly, there is an HMCTS protocol in place with journalists, which is based on the criminal procedure rules and makes it clear how this data can be used. We do not know what a third party is going to do—we did not know about this, we did not see its contract, and we want to know why not.