Labour has told a court archive to stop deleting its data used to track grooming gangs in its latest U-turn.
The Courtsdesk archive said Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and courts service lawyers had ordered it to pause the deletion of its records on Wednesday night.
Courtsdesk data could have been used to effectively track and tackle grooming gangs.
An analysis from the firm looked at 25,118 cases and found 1,120 victims of child abuse were linked to two or more defendants.
In 41 of the cases, defendants were linked to three of more defendants, and 29 were linked to five or more defendants.
It found rape gang hotspot Rochdale to be the most frequent location of cases with two or more defendants, with 46.
The town was directly referenced by Yvette Cooper in Parliament during testimony about Baroness Longfield’s grooming gang inquiry.
Enda Leahy, the archive’s founder and CEO, said the analysis revealed “patterns in prosecution delays, repeat offending, cross-boundary grooming, and geographic clustering” which had not been seen before.
The Ministry of Justice has now told the Courtsdesk archive to pause deletion
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The archive had been told to delete all of its information by February 9, and had began to delete its content before the message from the legal department to “engage in dialogue about a new licence”.
But now, the MoJ has offered it a lifeline, and has invited Courtsdesk to talks over a new licence to hold the data.
The dispute between the MoJ and Courtsdesk centred around data protection, which Courtdesk said it has always maintained.
Earlier this week, Conservative MP Dr Kieran Mullan told GB News: “It’s not really the information that’s the problem. It’s just about making sure people follow the rules.”
He added: “They point out that dates of birth and addresses of some individuals, victims and criminals, are of course sensitive.
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David Lammy’s Ministry of Justice offered Courtsdesk a lifeline on Wednesday night
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“But right now, that information has been emailed to all sorts of people via a distribution list, including third-party organisations and charities.
“Some addresses are Gmail or Hotmail accounts. That’s what makes this seem slightly disingenuous.
“The Government hasn’t raised this issue in multiple years, even though it’s been happening for a long time.”
The MoJ has said it would not scrub its own internal archives, but its information is held in a far less structured way.
Conservative MP Katie Lam said its deletion would sabotage the upcoming national inquiry into grooming gangs.
She told The People’s Channel: “The national inquiry, which hasn’t yet begun, although the draft terms of reference have been published, will be looking at grooming and rape gangs across the country.
“It should be examining patterns of behaviour, patterns of abuse, and different types of cases including cases that we might not even realise are connected until we look at them together.”
CEO Mr Leahy said he does not believe the deletion was an active attempt to cover-up grooming gangs.
But he added: “This analysis shows how useful such data could be in helping understand and tackle the issue.”
The MoJ said: “We recognise that the ability for journalists to access and search courts lists in a single place is helpful. Therefore we are currently doing three things: first, we have a launched a competition and market engagement exercise for new providers under a new licensing regime (which would be open to Courtsdesk to bid for).
“Second, in the interim, we have contacted Courtsdesk with a view to potentially reestablishing their service provided they can demonstrate they will comply with our data protection requirements.
“Third, by the end of March we will be expanding the Court and Tribunal Hearings (CaTH) service, an online portal which allows journalists and the public to search such information. By the end of March, CaTH will include Magistrates’ and Crown Court lists alongside the Civil, Family and Tribunal hearing lists already published.”