Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of using AI to produce trial transcripts.

The government is constantly assessing how to improve the efficiency within the criminal justice system, including mechanisms to accelerate trial transcripts.

We recognise the potential merits to using automated technology for trial transcriptions, including a potential reduction in the time it takes to produce a transcription and comparative value for money.

Transcriptions must achieve very high levels of accuracy (99.5%) to ensure the justice system can operate fairly and effectively. However, even software with learning capability cannot yet reliably meet the accuracy requirements for the service without human intervention.