Shabana Mahmood

Shabana Mahmood

Labour — Birmingham Ladywood

Speaking in the House of Commons on 22 May 2025

Debate

Independent Sentencing Review

Contribution

On tagging retrospectively, I will certainly go away and have a look at that point. I suspect, although I do not want to mislead the hon. Member or the House, that a retrospective trawl of all cases—including common assault, which is where we see most domestic abuse cases land for a charge and a criminal case—may be beyond where we can get with the data available to us and the time it would take. However, going forward we will try to capture exactly those cases—not only domestic abuse-connected offences, but other offences such as common assault, which we know have taken place in a domestic abuse context—so that they are all flagged and proper data is kept. On transcripts, sentencing remarks are currently available for other victims, such as in murder cases and so on, and that will be extended to victims of rape and serious sexual violence. To repeat a point I made earlier, I believe in a transparent justice system. I would like to be in the position of using AI technology to make not just sentencing remarks available. We are thinking about making broadly what happens in courts and such transcripts more widely available. What inhibits us is cost, and we are trying to take out that cost by looking at AI models, but we cannot proceed with anything unless we are absolutely certain about its accuracy because, as I am sure the hon. Member appreciates, a document purporting to be a record of what was said in court needs to be bang on.

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