The Directors of Liverpool Law Society meet with MPs on a biannual basis, to ensure there is an ongoing opportunity to discuss developments and concerns impacting the legal community.
Members may recall from our November 2025 edition, that during the last meeting which was held on 10 October 2025, the issue of the Legal Aid Agency data breach was raised by the Ian Townley, Chair of the Society’s Access to Justice Committee. Ian highlighted the impact of the cyber attack (which resulted in an outage of the Legal Aid Agency’s CCMS system from May to December 2025) on both practitioners and their clients.
In response to Ian’s update, Marie Rimmer (Labour MP for St Helens South and Whiston) invited the Society’s collaboration in drafting a number of Parliamentary Questions for response. The finalised queries (which were submitted as written questions by Ms Rimmer) addressed the method used to gain unauthorised access to the system; the steps taken by the Legal Aid Agency following the attack; the types of data compromised; whether there was any intention to compensate legal aid providers for the disruption; whether a disaster recovery plan had been in place; and what future measures would be taken to protect against future incidents.
Responses were received in late December 2025, which have been reported on by the Law Society. Read further here: Justice minister admits Legal Aid Agency did not have digital disaster recovery plan before cyber attack | Law Gazette