Andrew Nicholson

🇬🇧 The Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of the UK's largest court reporting archive. Courtsdesk, a platform launched to improve media access to magistrates' court data has been ordered to delete its archive of records by David Lammy's Ministry of Justice. 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. In November, HM Courts and Tribunal Service 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." Enda Leahy, the Courtsdesk chief executive said: "We built the only system that could tell journalists what was actually happening in the criminal courts. 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." Follow: @europa