Asked by: Lord Blencathra (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the recent cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency; what steps they are taking to ensure that legal aid providers are being remunerated for their work despite any disruption; and when the Agency's online digital service will again be operational.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
On Wednesday 23 April, the Department became aware of a cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) online digital services.
To ensure the best chance of reaching as many potentially impacted individuals as possible the Ministry of Justice acted quickly. A notice was published a notice at 08:15 on the 19 May on GOV.UK.
This has been an unprecedented event and every effort is being made to restore services following the criminal attack on our systems. The LAA digital services have been taken offline to negate the threat and prevent further exposure of legal aid providers and users. We have been able to return some systems to internal use, enabling an improved ability to support criminal legal aid applications and payments.
We cannot confirm a specific timescale for full service restoration. In the interim, the LAA will continue to provide updates as soon as they are available and will work closely with representative bodies to ensure any extended or refined contingency measures support providers and their clients to the maximum extent. All updates, including contingency arrangements, are published on the LAA’s dedicated cyber security incident webpage: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/legal-aid-agency-cyber-security-incident.
Our priority remains to maintain access to justice and to ensure legal aid providers can continue to be paid in a timely manner. These enhanced measures are designed to support legal aid providers and their clients and to prevent a significant case backlog while contingency measures are in place.
The data breach is the result of serious 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 LAA digital services. This investment will make the system more robust and resilient in the face of similar cyber-attacks in future.
Asked by: Lord Birt (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the reason for the backlog in scheduling criminal trials in London; what is the currently scheduled trial with the longest delay; what proportion of trials are cancelled because of witness withdrawal; and what action they are taking to reduce the backlog.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government inherited a record and rising courts backlog, due in large part to restrictions on courtroom operations put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, and subsequent Criminal Bar Association strike action. In addition, over the last 12-months, we have seen an 18.6% increase in new cases for the London Crown Courts.
Listing is a judicial function. HM Courts & Tribunals Service works in liaison with the judiciary reviewing and prioritising cases when listing trials, in accordance with the sitting day allocation.
In some Crown Court centres across the London region, cases listed for trial in June 2025 were given dates in 2028 and 2029 – with a very small number being listed into the summer of 2029. However, the vast majority of the trial load is listed before the end of 2026.
The Ministry of Justice publishes statistics on ineffective trial rates, and the general reasons behind ineffective trials (including witness absence/withdrawal), here: Criminal court statistics quarterly: January to March 2025 - GOV.UK.
This Government has funded a record-high allocation of Crown Court sitting days – 110,000 days this financial year, 4,000 more than the previous Government – to tackle the outstanding caseload. We also commissioned Sir Brian Leveson to undertake an Independent Review of the Criminal Courts to consider the merits of longer-term reform and the efficiency of processes in the criminal courts. We will carefully consider Sir Brian’s proposals in more detail before setting out the Government’s full response to the report in the autumn.
As part of our commitment to bearing down on the criminal caseload we have increased magistrates’ court sentencing powers from 6 months to 12 months’ imprisonment for single triable-either way offences. This will free up capacity in the Crown Court.
Asked by: Lord Sandhurst (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to join the nine EU member states in calling for reform of the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights; and if so, when.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government is fully committed to the protection of human rights both domestically and internationally and remains unequivocally committed to international human rights frameworks.
However, as the Lord Chancellor set out in her speech to the Council of Europe, we are encouraging a constructive dialogue between Contracting Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights on how the Convention can respond to developments in our societies and restore public confidence in the rule of law.
Asked by: Lord Sandhurst (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to call for the reform of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court's approach to the application of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government is fully committed to the protection of human rights both domestically and internationally and remains unequivocally committed to international human rights frameworks.
However, as the Lord Chancellor set out in her speech to the Council of Europe, we are encouraging a constructive dialogue between Contracting Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights on how the Convention can respond to developments in our societies and restore public confidence in the rule of law.
Asked by: Lord Sandhurst (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the need to reform the European Court of Human Rights in order to restore public trust in the rule of law.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government is fully committed to the protection of human rights both domestically and internationally and remains unequivocally committed to international human rights frameworks.
However, as the Lord Chancellor set out in her speech to the Council of Europe, we are encouraging a constructive dialogue between Contracting Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights on how the Convention can respond to developments in our societies and restore public confidence in the rule of law.
Asked by: Lord Sandhurst (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the current state of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This Government is fully committed to the protection of human rights both domestically and internationally and remains unequivocally committed to international human rights frameworks.
However, as the Lord Chancellor set out in her speech to the Council of Europe, we are encouraging a constructive dialogue between Contracting Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights on how the Convention can respond to developments in our societies and restore public confidence in the rule of law.
Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many super-injunctions are currently in force in England and Wales.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government does not routinely publish or hold centralised data on the number of super-injunctions currently in force, due to the sensitive and often confidential nature of such orders.
Where such orders are made, they are typically issued by the High Court under strict judicial oversight and may include provisions that prevent disclosure of their very existence.
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of sex offenders serving a custodial sentence in prison are foreign nationals, broken down by nationality.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, we are unable to provide the requested information at this time, as doing so would disclose a subset of data which is currently intended for future publication by the Ministry of Justice.
Data on the number of Foreign National Offenders in prison by offence group is due for publication on 31 July 2025 in the Offender Management Statistics Quarterly.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what penalties have been imposed on private sector companies providing Prisoner Escort and Custody Services in the most recent 12-month period for which data are available, broken down by court building and date.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
It would not be possible to provide disaggregated data at the level of detail requested without incurring disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate she has made of the number of community service hours offenders have completed in the West Midlands in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Between July 2021 and December 2024, a total of 1,272,250 hours of unpaid work were worked in the West Midlands.
Year | Unpaid work hours worked |
July to December 2021 | 143,360 |
January to December 2022 | 352,660 |
January to December 2023 | 371,915 |
January to December 2024 | 404,315 |
Data from April 2022 to December 2024 sourced from the latest published statistics on unpaid work. A link can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/biannual-unpaid-work-management-information.
Data from July 2021 to March 2022 sourced from nDelius on 22/07/2025. While these data have been assured as much as practical, as with any large administrative dataset, the data should not be assumed to be accurate to the last value presented.
Data from the biannual Unpaid Work publication are rounded to the nearest five hours worked for data suppression purposes. To be consistent with the publication, the hours worked between July 2021 and March 2022 have also been rounded to the nearest five.
The next publication is due in Autumn 2025.
Data prior to July 2021 is unable to be reported on, due to difficulty in aligning regions pre and post-unification. The unification of Community Rehabilitation Companies and the National Probation Service in England and Wales took place on 26 June 2021, marking a significant restructuring of the probation system.