Mike Wood

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman has not always been an uncritical friend of the current Government, but he has to recognise that his party has been in government for more than a year and a half, during which there were opportunities to take action if they were unhappy with our contract. As I said, the warning signs were there in black and white. Ministers were on notice of the potential for problems and their consequences. Despite that, on 7 July last year—a full year into this Government—the permanent secretary told the Public Accounts Committee that the Cabinet Office would decide in December whether Capita should take over administration. On 14 November 2025, the Cabinet Office wrote to trade unions confirming that Capita would indeed take over from 1 December, stating that it was satisfied—this Government, this permanent secretary and this Minister’s Department were satisfied—that Capita had taken on board the findings of those reports. Serious questions have to be answered. What assurances were provided by Capita to Ministers before that final decision was taken at the end of last year? What scrutiny was applied to those assurances and by whom? Why, in his letter to colleagues, did the Minister for the Cabinet Office claim that these issues had only come to his attention “in recent weeks” when both the National Audit Office report in June and the Public Accounts Committee report in October warned of a “clear risk” that Capita would not be ready? The Public Accounts Committee was clear that Capita had missed seven out of its eight key transitional milestones to deliver its IT system and said: “The Cabinet Office needs to fully develop contingency plans”. If the Minister is right that he was only made aware of these problems in recent weeks, should the Government not have known far sooner and acted far sooner? Although it is welcome that interest-free hardship loans are now available, this action has clearly come too late. Those loans should have been made available on an emergency basis from 1 December—the same day that Capita took over administration—so that people were not left in financial limbo. Instead, some pensioners have reported being forced to take out costly commercial loans or to borrow from friends and family simply to cover basic living costs. That is unacceptable. Can the Minister guarantee that no one affected will face further disruption beyond the end of this month? Can she guarantee that pension payments will be stabilised fully and permanently? The warning signs were there for months, and the failure to act decisively after the publication of the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee reports is stark. Although it is deeply disappointing that the Government failed to prevent this from happening, we can all agree that it is now in everyone’s interest—