When Juliana Terlizzi’s rapist was convicted in 2022, her therapist advised her to obtain the transcript of her trial to help with her recovery. She was quoted £7,500 to access this document, a sum she could not afford to pay. The denial of her application for a free transcript left her feeling 'used and discarded' by the court system that relied on her testimony and was meant to protect her.
Julia’s experience is far from unique. In 2024 a BBC investigation found that victims have been quoted fees of up to £22,000 to access the official record of their hearings. Bereaved families, public interest journalists, the wrongly accused and those seeking to challenge unlawful decisions are also impacted by the current arrangements for accessing transcripts, which campaigners have argued place a paywall around a system that is meant to be open.
Public concern has grown since 2019 when my report to the court service raised this issue on behalf of stakeholders. This week, parliament debated a petition that has gathered over 200,000 signatures from members of the public and calls for transcripts from all court and tribunal hearings to be made freely available.
The high cost of public access to transcripts is neither inevitable nor accidental. It is a direct consequence of the way in which the court service has chosen to procure transcription services from private companies. Under this model, the court service pays suppliers for transcripts it requires. The transcription company is responsible for any anonymisation that may be required and applying any reporting restrictions that are in place.
When a member of the public requests a transcript, they must make a request to the court the hearing took place at and pay the transcription company directly at commercial rates. If the hearing has already been transcribed for the court service or another member of the public, a lower copy rate will apply - although this varies between suppliers. While the court service sets a maximum cost per number of words for transcripts in civil, family or tribunal proceedings, the cost of applying for Crown court transcripts is less transparent - with costs generally only provided upon request.
Responding in the debate, junior justice minister Jake Richards recognised that the petition demonstrates a 'real public interest in transparency' but cited contractual, technological and legal barriers that limit the government’s ability to act at this time. On the contractual point the minister is correct – the current procurement framework runs until 2027.
On technology, and the limits of AI transcription he is also right to be cautious - recent research from the Ada Lovelace Institute, which reviewed the use of AI transcription tools by social workers, highlighted the risks of bias and hallucinations that generative AI based systems introduce. This research demonstrates the importance of retaining a 'human in the loop' to guard against inaccuracies when AI transcription tools are used in legally significant contexts, and underscores why we might not wish to rush to AI for an immediate solution.
On the legal constraints – ensuring that reporting restrictions are applied, data protection law complied with, and the administration of justice protected the challenge is less clear – no one is suggestion that making access to transcripts free to the public means that they should not be reviewed for accuracy. If the concern is that making transcripts free would support bulk access – which in turn might facilitate the profiling of judges, lawyers, witnesses and litigants – it is worth pointing out that existing contracts do not preclude this if the requester can pay and they have approval from the court and the court service.
The mechanism through which decisions on bulk access are reached is opaque - an issue which any reform could and should address as part of a commitment to transparency.
There are several immediate options available to the government if it is committed to going 'further and faster' as the minister stated in the debate. The first and most expensive would be to decide that HMCTS should absorb the cost of paying suppliers for transcripts requested by the public under existing arrangements. This would require Treasury approval (which is unlikely to be forthcoming), but it is disingenuous to suggest it is not an option – only that the government does not wish to pay for it.
The second would be to require transcripts that have already been produced to be deposited in a publicly accessible repository – a solution advocated for by stakeholders since 2019. The National Archives, which hosts digital repositories of legislation and case law, and already holds some transcripts, could provide the infrastructure for this. Managing requests for bulk access would require strengthening and centralisation of information governance - which should include reinvigorating and strengthening the Senior Data Governance Panel established by the Ministry of Justice under the last government.
The third option would be to build public access requirements into the next procurement framework tender from the outset: this requires engagement with stakeholders which must start now to ensure that the resulting arrangements are fit for purpose.
The 2027 procurement framework represents a direct and genuine opportunity to create a system that serves the public - but only if the groundwork is laid now. That means stakeholder engagement starting immediately, information governance reform that brings transparency to bulk access decisions with penalties for misuse, and a government willing to boldly commit to open justice. Over two hundred thousand signatures suggest the public expects more than the piecemeal reforms that have been offered so far. The question is - will the government listen?
Dr Natalie Byrom is an honorary senior research fellow at UCL. and former adviser to HMCTS on open data
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