Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
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 and LAA for an update on how they were monitoring the sustainability and profitability of legal aid work. MoJ said that it had recently surveyed both criminal and civil legal aid providers and that it was currently considering recommendations made by the CLAAB. It also stated that fees across the rest of civil legal aid remain under review. However, it 38 Qq 44-53, 67-68 39 HC Committee of Public Accounts, Value for money from legal aid, Thirty-Third Report of Session 2023-24, HC 481, 24 May 2024. 40 HMT, Treasury Minutes, 5 September 2024 41 Letter from the Ministry of Justice, 6 November 2025 14 stressed that any changes to fees are ultimately a decision for Ministers.42 LAA acknowledged that the sustainability of legal aid remains a concern and that while setting fees is outside of its domain, there are several things it was doing to help address this. This includes looking at what it can do to reduce the administrative burden on providers, extending contract terms to give providers more certainty, and making contract processes more flexible to enable firms to join the market more regularly, which was previously only possible every five years.43
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".