As a former Director of Public Prosecutions struggles to remain Prime Minister while the present Justice Secretary and the last one both manoeuvre to succeed him, George Greenwood writes:
The Ministry of Justice is ordering the deletion of a large archive of court records, raising open justice concerns.
Courtsdesk, a data analysis company that supports media and campaigners in monitoring court records, has been ordered by the government to delete its archive, which provides a crucial tool for journalists covering the justice system.
The project was approved by the lord chancellor in 2021 to explore how a “national digital news feed of listings and registers can improve coverage of the courts by the news media” by opening up magistrate court records.
According to Courtsdesk, the platform has since been used by more than 1,500 journalists from 39 media organisations and the data provided has highlighted serious failures in the courts system.
It said journalists were given no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, the number of court cases listed was accurate on just 4.2 per cent of sitting days and half a million weekend cases were heard with no notification to the press.
Two-thirds of all courts routinely heard cases that the media was not told about in advance. Seventeen courts that sent outcome records had not once published an advance listing in the entire period, the company’s research found.
In November, HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) issued the company a cessation notice, citing what it called “unauthorised sharing” of court data, on the basis of a test feature, claiming this was a “data protection issue.”
When the company wrote to the department asking for the matter to be referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates data protection, it says no referral was made.
Chris Philp, the former justice minister who approved the pilot and now shadow home secretary, wrote to Sarah Sackman, the courts minister, demanding the decision be reversed.
Last week the government issued a final refusal, meaning the archive must now be deleted within days.
Enda Leahy, the Courtsdesk chief executive and a former legal affairs correspondent at The Sunday Times, said: “We built the only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts.
“HMCTS’s own data proves they can’t do it — their records were accurate 4.2 per cent of the time, 1.6 million cases were heard without any advance notice to the press.
“We wrote 16 times asking for dialogue. Last week we got our answer: delete everything. If the government were interested in open justice, they would engage in a dialogue.”
The Ministry of Justice was approached for comment.
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