No cyber attack compensation scheme for legal aid solicitors

The Ministry of Justice will not be setting up a compensation scheme for solicitors affected by the Legal Aid Agency cyber attack, a minister has told MPs.

The House of Commons justice select committee flexed its power last month to demand answers from the ministry on compensation after concerns were raised about the clarity, adequacy and longer-term consequences of emergency funding arrangements in submissions to the committee’s access to justice inquiry.

In a letter published last week, minister Sarah Sackman said she was aware that some providers had raised concerns about the additional burdens related to contingency operations. Her department had worked closely with stakeholders to simplify processes, including testing new or revised service functionality, extending the average payment scheme for civil certificated work and temporarily suspending audits to east administrative pressures.

‘Our priority at the present is working through the backlog of cases which is currently progressing well. We have no plans to set up a compensation scheme at this time,’ Sackman said.

Last year practitioners told the minister about the amount of unpaid administrative work they were doing every day as a direct result of the cyber attack. Asked by the committee if her department had assessed the additional billable casework time caused by the system outage and cost of completing paper applications, Sackman said an assessment could not be done. 

‘Providers submit their claims over an extended period, and for many civil cases this may take months or even several years, particularly where providers are managing backlogs or only need to bill to match the level of Average Payment Scheme recoupment. As a result, the full set of relevant claims from the outage period will not be available for some time.’

Sackman said practitioners could claim additional billable costs they believe they have incurred through the ‘normal billing processes’ set out in the costs assessment guidance.

Jenny Beck, director of family law specialist Beck Fitzgerald, told the minister last year that the guidance treats claims for downtime or system slowness as office overheads, so the costs are not recoverable.