MPs say weak oversight of legal aid risks excluding vulnerable people from justice
Members of Parliament have issued a stark warning to the Ministry of Justice, accusing it of failing to safeguard access to justice and risking the collapse of the legal aid system.
In a sharply critical progress report, the House of Commons public accounts committee said it was unconvinced that the ministry had done enough to ensure the long-term sustainability of the legal aid market. MPs warned that unless urgent action was taken, the department risked serving only sections of society able to pay for legal representation.
The committee said the Ministry of Justice should help ministers set legal aid fees by routinely reviewing the profitability and sustainability of legal aid across all areas of practice. Without this information, ministers could not make informed decisions on funding, it argued.
The report revisited concerns raised in May 2024 in the committee’s Value for money from legal aid inquiry, which found that while the ministry was conducting large-scale reviews of criminal and civil legal aid, it had failed to put in place mechanisms to regularly assess whether fees were viable for providers.
Although the ministry has committed to increasing legal aid fees for housing and immigration work, these uplifts have yet to be implemented. Fees for other areas of civil legal aid have not risen since 1996 and remain under review. MPs noted that organisations including the Law Society continued to warn that the proposed increases were insufficient to secure the future of the market.
The committee acknowledged that the Legal Aid Agency was exploring ways to reduce administrative burdens and had made entry into the market easier for providers. However, MPs stressed that this did not remove the need for regular, evidence-based reviews of fee sustainability.
In its Ministry of Justice follow-up: Autumn 2025 report, published today, the committee said it was also dissatisfied with progress on ensuring access to legal aid for people who are digitally excluded. Significant gaps in face-to-face provision remained, particularly for housing and debt advice.
More than a decade after the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act reforms, MPs said the ministry still lacked a clear understanding of the additional costs created elsewhere in the justice system. They highlighted the growing number of litigants in person and criticised the ministry’s failure to improve data on the impact this had on courts.
The committee also called on the ministry to explain the effects of shifting costs to other public services, such as local authorities and healthcare, and to account for the lessons learned from the cyberattack on the Legal Aid Agency in December 2024.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the committee, said the legal aid reforms risked becoming “an extinction event” for access to legal advice in large parts of the country. He warned that if the government continued to ignore the issue, the Ministry of Justice might more accurately be described as the “Ministry of Justice (for Certain People)”.
Report Recommendations:
The Ministry of Justice should write to the Committee alongside its Treasury Minute response setting out:
- The results of and its response to its survey of local authorities about the effects of shunting costs to other government departments, and any further investigations it plans. For example, exploring where a lack of early advice creates additional costs for other areas, such as healthcare.
- On the impact of the increase in litigants in person on courts, including any additional time and cost as a result, and how it will improve the data it bases its analysis on. For example, taking into account how active a LIP is in court processes.
- outside of exploring changes to contracts, how it plans to better monitor whether digitally excluded individuals can access legal aid.
- what it is doing to close gaps in provision in areas where legal aid deserts still exist.
- Although Ministers are responsible for setting legal aid fees, the Ministry of Justice should better support them by routinely reviewing profitability and sustainability for all types of legal aid. It should set out its plans to do this in its Treasury Minute Response.