Legal Aid Agency: Cybercrime
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, a) what impact the 2025 cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency has had on data collection and publication, and b) what his Department is doing in response.
Answered by Sarah Sackman
As a precaution following the identification of the criminal attack on the Legal Aid Agency’s (LAA) digital portal, some of the LAA’s digital services were taken offline. This constrained the LAA’s ability to centrally collect and report on data across all legal aid schemes. During the period where digital services were offline, data continued to be collected, where possible, using manual processes for data which would ordinarily be collected via digital systems.
Official Statistics for quarters one and two of 2025-2026 were delayed in publication due to insufficient data availabilty at that time. The quarterly publication of official statistics resumed on 26 March 2026, publishing available data up to December 2025. The most recent publication of Official Statistics covering data up to March 2026 can be accessed here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/legal-aid-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2026.
There remain some gaps in the published data series due to replacement of digital systems, which are being addressed. Additional functionality is being implemented in new systems to enable publication of Legal Help and Mediation matter starts, and the LAA are exploring alternative sources for the data for High Cost Crime expenditure. Our aim is to add those series that are currently unavailable to future releases, including information for previous periods.
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