There is something deeply disturbing about what is happening in Britain right now. Under the pretext of “data protection”, an important tool for public insight into the justice system is being shut down and erased. At the same time, the government refuses to publish crime statistics that could shed light on migration status and background in certain patterns of offending.
Taken separately, each decision can be explained as administrative. Taken together, they look like something else: a state making it harder for citizens to see reality clearly.
Courtsdesk Is Deleted — and the State Calls It “Protection”
The Ministry of Justice has ordered that a substantial database of court information — Courtsdesk — be deleted. The government’s explanation is that the company behind it allegedly shared sensitive data with a third-party AI actor, thereby breaching an agreement.
On the surface, this sounds technical: a matter of procedure, compliance, responsibility.
But this is precisely where alarm bells should ring.
Why Total Erasure Instead of Proportionate Safeguards?
Why is the solution total deletion? Why not a limited clean-up, anonymisation, a revised contract, or stricter technical safeguards?
Why choose the most drastic measure of all: removing a tool that has made systematic documentation possible?
In a democracy, it is not the citizen’s job to reassure themselves when the state turns off access to information. It is the state’s job to explain itself — clearly, openly, and in a way that can be tested.
The Crime Data That Never Appears
At the same time, another debate is unfolding, one that only deepens suspicion.
The government refuses to compile or publish detailed crime statistics broken down by migration status and national background. The explanation is that the data do not exist centrally, that producing them would be costly, or that they could be misused.
But the absence of data is not neutral.
Grooming Gangs and Political Evasion
When the state can readily measure crime by age, sex, and geography, yet becomes vague precisely where public debate is most intense, it is inevitable that people ask: who has an interest in the public seeing less?
This is particularly relevant in light of the grooming gangs scandal — the systematic abuse and institutional failure that have haunted Britain for decades.
Journalists as Gatekeepers of Public Insight
And then there is an even deeper problem the Courtsdesk case exposes: who, exactly, has access to the reality of the courts?
In Britain, restrictions are often defended by claiming that accredited journalists represent the public’s eyes and ears.
But it is a dangerous idea.
Why should citizens’ access to court information run through a professional class of gatekeepers? Why should the public’s ability to verify reality depend on what journalists — who too often operate within a politically uniform milieu — choose to cover, and on what the state chooses to grant them access to?
That is not transparency. It is filtered transparency.
Non-Crime Hate Incidents and Administrative Control of Speech
This case should also be seen in the context of a broader British pattern: a state increasingly willing to intervene in speech itself.
The police practice of recording so-called non-crime hate incidents — incidents logged as “hate” even where no offence has been committed — has already shown how far authorities are prepared to go in the direction of administrative control over expression.
And every year, thousands are investigated or arrested under broad provisions on “offensive communications” and “malicious communications”.
Freedom Requires Access, Not Intermediaries
This is precisely the kind of soft power that undermines freedom — not by making truth illegal, but by making it risky to speak, and difficult to document.
Democracy requires more than freedom of speech. It requires public access.
