Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 18
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We asked MoJ what work it had done to better understand the effects of its legal aid reforms on local authorities and their legal advice services. MoJ said that it has surveyed local authorities to understand where they were providing additional legal advice and why, but it told us that it did not have a high response rate to the survey. It explained that while the response rate was low, responses showed that there may be several reasons for local authorities to be providing advice, including that the issue or individual’s circumstances may be outside the scope of legal aid. It also stressed that it had done a lot of work with MHCLG, particularly around the Renters’ Rights Bill, which may create more legal disputes, and how to ensure that provision of legal aid is in the right places to meet this demand. We asked MoJ whether these conversations had changed anything for local government. However, in response it only stated that it had rolled out a new pathfinder pilot in family courts which it said should help to reduce burdens on local government as a specialist worker will point families to legal advice that it now funds.37 34 HC Committee of Public Accounts, Value for money from legal aid, Thirty-Third Report of Session 2023-24, HC 481, 20 May 2024. 35 Law Society of England and Wales (MOJ0002): Public Law Project (MOJ0004) 36 HMT, Treasury Minutes, 5 September 2024 37 Qq 37-41 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".