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, whether he has conducted an equality impact assessment on the expanded use of AI within courts and tribunals.

The Department and HMCTS have due regard to their obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty when developing and implementing policy and operational changes. Equality considerations are taken into account as part of the design and evaluation of service changes, and appropriate equality analysis has informed, and will continue to inform, decisions on the adoption and scaling of AI-enabled tools and services within courts and tribunals. This is undertaken on a use-case-by-use-case basis, rather than through a single blanket assessment.