Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when will legal aid providers be able to submit (a) bills and (b) claims for payments on account following the Legal Aid Agency data breach.

This is an unprecedented event and an evolving situation, and every effort is being made to restore services following the criminal attack on our systems. The Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) digital services have been taken offline to negate the 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 systems to internal use, enabling an improved ability to support criminal legal aid applications and payments.

In the interim, a number of contingency measures have been implemented to ensure that access to legal aid remains available and that providers are receiving payments. Contingency measures for billing, including an average payment scheme for civil cases, were implemented week commencing 27 May. For crime providers, processing of bills for graduated fee schemes resumed on 28 May, with payments resuming the following week.

On 27 June, emergency legislation came into force enabling the LAA to implement enhanced business continuity arrangements. The new legislation provides for increased delegation of powers to providers and removes civil client contributions. The average payment scheme already operating in civil legal aid will continue.

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 recent 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 Legal Aid Agency digital services. This investment will make the system more robust and resilient in the face of similar cyber-attacks in future.