Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will set out the specific data protection concerns cited by HM Courts & Tribunals Service in its November 2025 cessation notice to Courtsdesk; and what assessment he has made of the reasons that data protection concerns could not be resolved without requiring deletion of the archive.

The concerns which led to the cessation of data sharing with Courtsdesk were based on the unauthorised sharing of HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) data with another party outside of the terms of the arrangement. Courtsdesk agreed under the terms of its pilot arrangement with HMCTS not to provide data to another company without notification to or authorisation by HMCTS. It acted outside the terms of that agreement by sharing data with a third-party AI company. The data provided to the other party without authorisation included sensitive, personally identifiable information of individuals involved in criminal cases, such as their full name, address and date of birth.

HMCTS takes seriously its responsibility to handle data safely to protect those people whose data it holds, and this left termination of the arrangement as the most appropriate course of action.

There has been no deletion of the archive

The Ministry of Justice is doing three things: first, we have launched a market engagement exercise for new providers to reuse our data under a new licensing regime (which would be open to Courtsdesk to apply for); second, in the interim, we have contacted Courtsdesk, and I have recently met with its CEO, with a view to potentially reestablishing their service provided they can demonstrate they will comply with our data protection requirements; third, by the end of March we will be expanding the Court and Tribunal Hearings (CaTH) service, an online portal which allows journalists and the public to access and search court-related information. By the end of March, CaTH will include Magistrates’ and Crown Court lists alongside the Civil, Family and Tribunal hearing lists already published.