Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 7
59th Report - Ministry of Justice follow-up: Autumn 2025
Published 7 Jan 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Ministry of Justice follow-up: Autumn 2025 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
HMPPS acknowledged that it would have been helpful to have more information on the density of radon at the Dartmoor site prior to the lease negotiations.11 However, it bizarrely maintained that signing the lease without undertaking a recent survey was sensible, given the prison capacity crisis at the time. It argued that in the context of needing to spend over £600 per cell per night to temporarily hold prisoners in police cells under Operation Safeguard, £1.5 million a year for 640 prison places felt like good value for money.12 MoJ also stated that it put mitigation measures in 5 HC Committee of Public Accounts, Value for money from legal aid, Thirty-Third Report of Session 2023-24, HC 481, 24 May 2024. 6 HMT, Treasury Minutes, 5 September 2024 7 HMG, “Legal Aid Agency data breach”, accessed on 22 November 2025 8 Committee of Public Accounts, Improving family court services for children, oral evidence, HC 883, 23 June 2025 9 Letter from the Ministry of Justice concerning HMP Dartmoor, 21 October 2025 10 Letter from Ministry of Justice concerning HMP Dartmoor, 2 October 2025 11 Qq 7, 11 12 Q 15 8 place following the results of the June 2022 survey but that it was a later cell-by-cell survey which led, following discussions with the Health and Safety Executive, to the decision to close the prison in 2024.13
From: Public Accounts Committee, 59th Report - Ministry of Justice follow-up: Autumn 2025 (HC 1240), 7 January 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 April 2026 (deadline 7 March 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the recommendations in the response, reporting some as implemented and giving target dates for others.
- On Dartmoor, HMPPS has reviewed its handling of the lease negotiations and identified areas of learning. MoJ and HMPPS will write to the Committee "once the proposed approach to remediating Dartmoor has been decided", with a target date of June 2026.
- On access to legal aid for the digitally excluded, an Ipsos civil demand feasibility study will report by the end of March 2026. The department will report back to the Committee on progress in October 2026.
- On market sustainability, the department will "explore options to routinely monitor the profitability of legal aid firms" and update the Committee in October 2026. Any future policy decisions will be "in the context of the department's spending review settlement".
- On the cyberattack, MoJ and LAA say lessons have already been shared across government. MoJ states that it "has allocated funding to the transformation of LAA systems over the 2026-2029 period".