Court Reporting Data

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

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.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I read the exchanges yesterday in the other place and I welcome what the Minister has said about this. Out of interest, what reason—or should I say, what excuse—did Courtsdesk give when it was revealed that it was passing personal, private and legally sensitive information to a third-party AI company? Will my noble friend reassure the House, partly in the light of the answer she has just given, that the information that is there and is publicly available will continue to be publicly available? I appreciate that journalists need to have it in a more accessible way, and I hope that, as a result of this episode, the Government will continue to do what they can to provide to journalists the information they have every right to have.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The answer to the first of my noble friend’s questions is that Courtsdesk says that it did not think there was anything wrong with what it was doing. We venture to disagree. The answer to the second question is, absolutely, and that is why we are going to issue licences to far more commercial companies, in the interests of competition, so that others can perform the same service and journalists can get the vital information they need so there is transparency in our courts.