Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his department is taking to ensure that publicly available court information is not fragmented or incomplete, in the context of the deletion of the court desk archive.

There has been no deletion of the Courtsdesk archive of courts lists. Courtdesk does not hold courts records. We recognise that the ability for journalists to access and search courts lists in a single place is helpful. We are doing three things to improve the way in which magistrates’ and Crown court lists are made available. First, we have launched a market engagement exercise for new providers to apply to reuse our data under a new licensing regime (which would be open to Courtsdesk to apply for). Second, we have met Courtsdesk with a view to potentially re-establishing their service, provided they can demonstrate they will comply with 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, professional users and the public to access and search court-related information, to include magistrates’ and Crown court lists alongside the civil, family and tribunal hearing lists already published.