Draft Administrative Court (Recording and Broadcasting) and Court of Appeal (Recording and Broadcasting) (Amendment) Order 2026 Draft Magistrates’ Courts (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2026

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 General Committees

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec.

As the Minister has outlined, these two orders make changes to the rules on recording and broadcasting court proceedings, and we support them. The previous Conservative Government took a number of steps to improve the transparency of the courts and to help the public to understand better how judicial decisions are made. Those steps included allowing proceedings in the Court of Appeal to be broadcast and, from 2022, allowing judges’ sentencing remarks in the Crown court to be filmed and broadcast. The aim was straightforward: people should be able to see and better understand how our courts work, while victims, witnesses and defendants continue to receive appropriate protection. These orders build on that approach.

It is important to note, as the Minister said, that this is not an unrestricted right to film proceedings. Recording and broadcasting will remain subject to the written permission of the court and to any conditions that the court considers appropriate in the interests of justice.

The first order also changes the arrangements in the Court of Appeal. At present, where a party is not legally represented, the ability to record and broadcast proceedings is limited. The order removes that restriction, meaning that submissions by litigants in person may also be recorded and broadcast—again, where the court gives permission and considers it appropriate. There is no obvious reason why the fact that somebody is representing themselves should automatically prevent proceedings from being broadcast, although there will inevitably be more sensitive matters for the judge to consider with unrepresented individuals.

The second order concerns magistrates courts, allowing sentencing remarks delivered by the chief magistrate in open court to be recorded and broadcast. Again, this is a relatively narrow measure. It does not introduce general broadcasting of magistrates court proceedings; recording is limited to the chief magistrate delivering sentencing remarks, in a way familiar to us from other courts. The defendant, witnesses and other participants will not be filmed, and existing reporting restrictions will continue to apply.

Allowing the public to hear directly from the judge why a particular sentence has been imposed may improve understanding of sentencing decisions. That is particularly important in serious or high-profile cases, where a headline reporting the length of a sentence may not explain the aggravating and mitigating factors that led the court to its decision. There is, therefore, a clear public interest in greater transparency when it can be achieved without compromising the rights and safety of those involved.

However, I would like to raise with the Minister the related topic of improving the transparency of sentencing remarks, which at the moment are published intermittently. Even I, a shadow Justice Minister, can find it difficult to get hold of the sentencing remarks when a case is reported in the news—very often they will not have been broadcast—and the same is certainly true of court transcripts. Can the Minister update us on giving shadow Ministers greater access to court remarks in high-profile cases, whether sentencing remarks or otherwise, to enable us to do our jobs better?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Sackman]

I am very grateful for the contributions to this debate. It is fantastic that we have consensus and support for both orders, which, as others have said, are concerned with open justice and with demystifying what happens in our courts. As the Liberal Democrat spokesman put so well, this is about justice being seen to be done, not just being done. The orders will enable that, building responsibly and incrementally on past reforms, and I believe that all of this can only improve public confidence in our justice system.

On the questions about the availability of transcripts, the hon. Gentleman will know that our ambition is to extend their availability, enabled by the rapid developments in technology that are allowing real-time transcription. However, we must be mindful of the costs, not least because transcription involves appropriate safeguards, such as redacting some of the remarks. Nevertheless, we took significant steps in the Sentencing Act, as the hon. Member for Chichester rightly acknowledged, to make transcripts of sentencing remarks available to victims. That is a big step forward.

We are looking to make transcription more widely available, not just in the criminal jurisdiction but in other jurisdictions as well. That is why we have made real headway in the immigration chamber. At the same time, we must be mindful of doing this properly and in a phased way that balances the very real cost to the system with other competing priorities, of which we are all very much aware, particularly when it comes to backlogs in our courts.

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle has raised the issue of access to sentencing remarks with me before, and I understand where he is coming from. However, he will know that he can apply to the court in the usual way to access sentencing remarks, and it is a matter for the judge. I know that he, like other hon. Members, takes an interest in particular cases, but we cannot privilege access for Members of Parliament; it is ultimately a matter for judicial discretion.

[Dr Mullan]

If the Minister sees a case that she is interested in and wants to gain a better understanding by seeing the sentencing remarks—this is separate from victims—does she get told that she has to apply as an MP would? I am asking not as an MP, but as a shadow Minister with particular responsibilities as part of His Majesty’s Opposition.

[Sarah Sackman]

The Government have to apply in the same way. If they are not a party to the case, they have to ask to get the remarks from the court. We have to preserve the court and the judge as the gatekeeper of the process. If access to the remarks is justified, they will no doubt be made available.

A question was asked about the outage experienced not just by our courts, but by other private and public sector bodies. In a week when fridges in different parts of Europe have been damaged by cyber-attacks, and systems have gone down, we have had a reminder that although we want to open up, digitise and modernise systems, it is important that we provide for contingencies when they fail.

When the Google platform went down, it showed that the systems in HMCTS were actually relatively robust, and the courts carried on working. Obviously, although the intention was for people to be able to view proceedings, that was temporarily unavailable, but it did not mean that court cases could not go ahead. As people will know, there was a series of pretty high-profile cases—there always are, particularly in some of our criminal courts—that were being closely followed by the media, many of whom would have been present in court. The question of what delays can be caused by such things is therefore apt. It depends on particular circumstances. In the Google example, there were not really any delays. In the vast majority of courts around the country, proceedings could go ahead, but when evidence is being given remotely, one can imagine circumstances where the systems going down present a problem. We want to encourage remote hearings because that is often the most efficient way for proceedings to go ahead.

I know that operational colleagues in HMCTS are ensuring that, as we continue to modernise our courts—as we must—we do so in a way that ensures that there are back-up systems, so that when problems like the Google cloud outage occur, there is back-up so that proceedings can go ahead even if they are not broadcast. It is preferable that they are, which is what the measures allow, but a judge managing a court has to balance competing considerations: do we want the case to go ahead on time even without the broadcast, or do we want to wait for another day because it is so important that the world can see this being done? It is right that we leave those sorts of decisions to our judges, who are well positioned to take them.

I hope that hon. Members agree that the orders are necessary and a good thing, and I commend both of them to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Magistrates’ Courts (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2026

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Magistrates’ Courts (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2026.—(Sarah Sackman.)