Legal Aid Agency: Cyber-security Incident

Alison Griffiths Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Sackman]

Once we have resolved this investigation, once we can be assured that the hackers are no longer in the system and that people’s data is safe and once we can be assured that our legal aid platform is operating properly and is handling people’s data in a safe way, there will need to be a stocktake and an effort to learn lessons, not least as we embark—we are already in the process of doing this—on stabilising and transforming this system so that it is fit for the future. No doubt, there will be lessons from this particular attack for other public and Government bodies. The question of compensation must wait for another day. My priority is removing the hackers from the system, making sure that they feel the full force of the law and ensuring that, in the meantime, no person who needs legal aid cannot get it and the system continues to operate.

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

Recent cyber-attacks on retail targets have highlighted the cost to businesses and individuals of an organisation’s failure to take cyber-security sufficiently seriously. This attack on the Legal Aid Agency, resulting in the theft of millions of pieces of deeply sensitive personal data, is perhaps the most egregious yet. Why has it taken a newspaper article to bring the Minister to the Chamber? What else is she not telling us?

[Sarah Sackman]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady has got her chronology the wrong way round. There was a newspaper article because the Ministry of Justice had published a public statement as soon as it became aware of the full extent of the threat. It did that to protect legal aid providers and their clients, the end users. We have been utterly transparent. It is not following the newspaper article; the hon. Lady has her facts exactly the wrong way round.