Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if his Department will (a) expand and (b) update Open Justice to include sentences for individual offences at individual courts, broken down by (i) gender, (ii) ethnicity and (iii) other demographic characteristics.

Open Justice concerns the rights of members of the public, including the media, to attend and scrutinise the work of the justice system, of which the courts are the administrators. The Government is committed to Open Justice and to wider transparency across the Justice System. Data relating to Criminal Justice cases is regularly published via the Criminal Justice System Delivery Data Dashboard (Criminal Justice System Delivery Data Dashboard - GOV.UK), the Crown Court Information Tool (Crown Court Information | Courts and Tribunals Judiciary) and the Criminal Court Statistics series and we regularly publish a range of information linked to specific offences, including ethnicity, sex and other demographics which is already collected in criminal courts and is published in tools available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2021.

Subject to the legislation listed in the note to rule 5.10 of the Criminal Procedure Rules, the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee decides what information about individual cases is to be made available to members of the public and others on request in criminal cases. Data relating to specific cases is available from the courts on request as set out in Criminal Procedure Rule 5.8. This includes the identity of the defendant, including the defendant’s date of birth, and information about sentencing but does not include the defendant’s sex (unless that is apparent from the defendant’s name), ethnicity or demographic data because that information is not required from the defendant in public in the courtroom. There are no current plans to change this.