Sally Jameson

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I declare that I have a Capita Prison Service pension of six years, but I am 34 years away from my retirement age, so I do not have a current financial interest. I am also a member of the Prison Officers’ Association. I want to apologise as I was not in my seat for the start of the speeches; I will endeavour in future Westminster Hall debates to be more bullish in fighting through the crowds to make sure I am here on time. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing this debate and actively campaigning on this issue for his constituents, as all Members present have done. I raised this issue both in Westminster Hall and the main Chamber before I became the Minister responsible for it—life comes at you fast. I am absolutely committed and determined to ensure that this issue is dealt with. I want to thank the constituents who have been affected by this issue. They are public servants who have given so much to our country and our communities. I give a special shout-out to my former colleagues in the Prison Service and at HMP Moorland, because public servants like them have dedicated their working lives to this country and deserve financial security and unwavering dignity in retirement—not corporate failure, not empty promises and not severe administrative failure. I will do my best to get through as much of my speech as I can in the time I have, but I am happy to speak to any Member after the debate to deal with individual case issues. Subject to the Speaker’s permission, I also hope to come to the House in October to give a full update. The continued poor experience delivered to the many public servants and their families by Capita, which has been the administrator of the civil service pension scheme since 1 December 2025, is totally abysmal. I have read accounts of the endless delays faced by scheme members, many of whom have written to their local MPs and Ministers, I have heard the concerns raised by hon. Members in the debate, and I have heard the concerns of my constituents in Doncaster Central. I am truly sorry to hear about the worry and distress that has been caused, particularly to those dealing with bereavement and death in service. Resolving this matter is of the utmost urgency for the Government, and we are taking direct action to intervene. I will answer some of the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby. First, on recovery, Capita has set a commitment to achieve its full service level agreements from the end of this month. I am meeting senior Capita staff later this month to challenge them again and get their assurance on that. On the commitment to redress and compensation, we are committed to ensuring that no member is left financially worse off. All complaints will be handled in line with Pensions Ombudsman standards. There is further work to do on that, and I intend to bring my focus to it, but in the immediate future, I want to make sure that as many scheme members as possible are getting their pension and the money they are owed. Further work will then be done to ensure that people are properly compensated. I will come to insourcing later in my speech. I will explain the context of this issue and how we got here. The contract was signed in 2023 under the previous Government. On 1 December, the administration of the scheme transferred from MyCSP to Capita. While the core payroll for over 730,000 existing pensioners continued to be paid correctly and on time, following the change of administrator, the process for retiring since December has been fraught with delays, and a large number of public servants and their families have been significantly impacted. Following that, Capita defaulted on its major recovery commitments, missing its end of April target to clear payment arrears and its end of June milestone to clear the backlog of inherited cases. Following Capita’s failure at the end of June, we mandated the production of a formal contract rectification plan, which was submitted by Capita in July. A remedial adviser from Grant Thornton was appointed at Capita’s expense to test the validity of that plan. They will test whether Capita can realistically deliver what it needs to with the systems it has in place and in the timeframe it has set out. Once Capita reports next month, we will hold it to account for the quality of its planning and execution. In addition, the Government have appointed a Government internal audit agency to undertake a deep review of the effectiveness of Capita’s operational arrangements between December and July. After I get all that information back and break it down, I will then report again in October. That will allow us to understand how Capita got it so wrong, despite Ministers receiving explicit personal assurances from the chief executive officer. We will hold it accountable for the quality of its delivery. In evidence given to the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 8 July, Capita committed to two further operational milestones: 1 December to clear all remaining backlog and retirement arrears; and 30 September to restore normal operations and standard contractual levels, excluding 600 complex cases. As stated in my ministerial statement on 9 September, Capita has reported that it has met that in five priority areas. I want to be clear that that is Capita’s reporting, not my or the Government’s reporting. I am personally testing that, based on cases that MPs have sent me that have come through my ministerial correspondence. I will be holding Capita executive to account on individual cases next week when I meet them. I am also working towards setting our own measures of Capita’s success. At the minute, it is setting its own milestones and measurements, and that is not good enough. We are in charge, so we need to tell it what our terms and measurements are, and it needs to work towards that. I am doing a separate piece of work on that. On transition and go-live, the decision obviously predated my elevation to Minister for this area, but it was based on evidence requested from Capita about capability and readiness in critical delivery areas. By November 2025, assessments indicated that Capita had made significant progress since the PAC hearing in July. It gave assurances via external audit by the National Audit Office, technical security assurance, gateway reviews in the go/no-go discussions in October and November, and weekly assessments of critical cases against specific acceptance criteria. To support and provide financial security to those impacted, the Government have approved more than £100 million to provide interest-free transitional support loans to public servants. Let me be clear: the Government should not have to financially plug any gaps due to Capita’s failure, but to date it has been necessary to supply more than 4,100 loans. I turn to Capita’s engagement with Members in this House. The volume of outstanding MPs’ correspondence has grown significantly, and peaked at 2,200 open cases. It has decreased slightly to 1,700, but it is still not good enough. In recognition of the need to do better, my predecessors set up the virtual surgeries system. To date, it has had more than 870 sessions with 260 parliamentary officers, which underlines the scale of the catastrophe we are facing. We will maintain those surgeries until the pension scheme is running smoothly. It feels like that could be a while, but we will not withdraw them. I am personally committed to continuing to work with the unions. I have already met the PCS union, which represents Capita employees and scheme members, and other unions, including the POA and the FDA. I met the Civil Service Pensioners’ Alliance this week to ensure that it is involved and that its views are heard throughout this process. I am using all commercial levers to hold Capita to account. We have held nearly £10 million in contractual payments for undelivered milestones. We will pay only for what has been successfully delivered, and nothing more. We have a Capita-funded remediation adviser, and we will be hearing from them very soon. We have also deployed auditors to Capita to get a full understanding of its failure, and we will be recovering all costs from it, including to pay for the 140 surge staff that the civil service has provided. Core operations are currently being propped up by the 140 surge staff, and we will put more in if required. The surge team will remain in full service until restoration is completed. We will not permit Capita to reduce its own headcount until performance has improved. The contract awarded by DWP followed a separate rigorous process; it was not done via the Cabinet Office. I have expressed my own views on that in this House before, so they are on the record. I think there is further work to be done to look at how we can hold Capita and similar companies to account when they fail in these areas. It has been nine months since Capita took over the new contract. The Government are very clear that members of the civil service pension scheme and their families deserve better. If any Members who have raised personal cases today have not already done so, I ask that they get in touch with me so that I can personally escalate them. I will hopefully come back to the House in October with a better update and more information. The Labour Government stood on a manifesto pledge to have the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation. I am personally committed to that. I have said in this House before that I think that is a priority for this scheme, but we can do that only if it is done in the interests of the members. There must be no disruption, so we have to do it in the smoothest and quickest way. I want Capita, not the taxpayer, to pay for its mistakes. It does not get to just walk away and do nothing about it. It needs to pay for this and get everyone their pensions, and then we will look at what needs to be done in terms of the long-term viability of the scheme. I am committed to doing that. I assure all hon. Members that this is absolutely a Government priority. It is also a personal priority for me, and I feel I have demonstrated that in recent months when I have raised it. We will not rest until it is sorted. I am conscious of time—I have about 15 seconds left. The Government will not accept further caveats or moving targets. We will not accept continued poor delivery for current and former civil servants, who deserve better in their retirement. I thank everyone for showing the strength of feeling today. More will come in October.