Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information her Department holds on when the Legal Aid Agency's online services will be restored following the cyber attack on 23 April 2025.

This is an unprecedented event involving sophisticated organised crime. It is an evolving situation and every effort is being made to restore systems following the criminal attack on our services. The Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) digital services have been taken offline to negate the serious criminal threat and prevent further exposure of legal aid providers and users. We will not reopen the system until the appropriate steps have been taken to enable us to do so. We have been able to return some to internal use, enabling an improved ability to support criminal legal aid applications and payments.

The Government are committed to ensuring that operational delivery of legal aid continues. We have put in place business contingency plans to ensure that those most in need of legal support can continue to access the help that they need and that those providing vital legal services can be confident they will continue to receive payments whilst systems are offline. In this way we are continuing to provide legal aid to those who need in without interruption.

The recent data breach is the result of heinous criminal activity, but it was enabled by the fragility of the LAA’s IT systems as a result of the long years of underinvestment under the last Conservative Government. By contrast, since taking power this Government has prioritised work to reverse the damage of over a decade of under-investment. That includes the allocation of over £20 million in extra funding this year to stabilise and transform the Legal Aid Agency digital services. This investment will make the system more robust and resilient in the face of similar cyber-attacks in future.