Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to his Department’s press release entitled Deputy Prime Minister sets out vision for the justice system, published on 24 February 2026, what estimate he has made of the time savings from the use of AI to transcribe hearings across the court system.

HMCTS is progressing work to expand AI-enabled transcription to support courts and tribunals. The Department has not published an estimate of time savings from the use of AI to transcribe hearings across the court system. It is worth noting that transcription of hearings is one of several use cases for AI assisted transcription. The main driver for hearing transcription is to make justice more open and transparent.

In line with HMCTS Responsible AI principles, decisions on scaling AI-enabled transcription will be informed by evaluation, including impacts on efficiency, quality and user experience, and will include robust processes for how errors will be identified, challenged and corrected.