Lord Mandelson Humble Address

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Lord Kamall

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure that anyone would expect me to have the details of anyone’s employment contract or their departure at hand, but noble Lords will be aware of Civil Service contracts, because they are available to Members of your Lordships’ House, and in fact this one was published as part of the first humble Address.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, following up on the question from my noble friend, the Minister said that deciding which messages to release was official led, if I completely understood that correctly. Is she able to tell the House what criteria or guidance were given to officials so that they could decide which messages to release?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, the methodology of what was published and why, and what was withheld and what was redacted, was published in every volume of the disclosure last week, which noble Lords will remember I had next to me when we did the Statement. That methodology was agreed by the Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office. A KC was then brought in to quality assure that process. Materials were passed to the ISC that related to national security and international relations, which the committee then redacted. Additional material was then seen by the honourable Simon Hoare MP in his role as chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. He was then invited in on Monday last week to look at the third-party redactions to make sure that he was comfortable with them on behalf of Parliament, and he believed them to be sensible.

El Niño: Impact

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Lord Kamall

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My noble friend is right, which is why the severe weather resilience network exists. It is led by COBRA and includes Defra, MHCLG, the Department of Health, DCMS, the Department for Education, DESNZ, DSIT, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, UKHSA and the devolved Governments, who meet and co-ordinate a response to any and all severe weather events. As the noble Baroness from the Opposition Benches stated, there are no borders in this space, especially with regards to weather, so making sure that the devolved Governments and the devolved space also have a co-ordinated response is key. I am really hoping someone asks me about the weather for the weekend because I can tell the House.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I am not going to ask the Minister about the weather for the weekend. I am going to ask her about a debate around how we tackle wildfires. There is a view that in order to tackle wildfires we have to remove scrub, but at the same time people believe that that reduces biodiversity. There is clearly a tension in wanting to reduce wildfires while keeping biodiversity. What is the Government’s perspective on that balance and how do we make sure that we land in the right place?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that there are challenges here, as there are in all issues, about how we balance protection and environmental developments to make sure that the answers work for each community. There will be different answers in different parts of the country depending on their land and the local environment. Some of this is a very localised response, which is why we have local resilience forums to make sure that that is working. If the noble Lord has something specific, I am more than happy to come back to him. I would like to reassure noble Lords that this weekend it will be warm with the chance of thundery showers at times with the highest temperatures reaching into the mid to high 20s in the south-east of England.

Civil Service Pensions: Capita

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Lord Kamall

Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I want to be very clear that this was a contract signed by the noble Baroness’s Government in 2023, and we are now managing the contract that they signed. As regards where we are in holding Capita to account, we have withheld £9.6 million in transition payments up until this point, from a contract value over seven years of £285 million. That is a significant withhold at this point. We are making sure that Capita is meeting its KPIs and we are meeting it every day as part of the recovery taskforce. However, the noble Baroness is absolutely right that a great number of public procurement challenges relate to the original contract and all this needs to be looked at in the round.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, the challenge of contacting many people affected by this is that some of them may not be digitally proficient and may be digitally excluded. What measures are the Government putting in place to make sure that those who are digitally excluded or not digitally proficient can be contacted and made fully aware of the issue?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right and there are various mechanisms being put in place, not least the call centre, which people should be able to access. I want to touch on something explicitly because the noble Lord has raised an important point. Some of the most heartbreaking issues that have come to light relate to people who have experienced death in service and bereavement. Therefore, they are receiving calls but not necessarily with the data on service, never mind their digital proficiency. So we have asked government departments to engage directly with the families of their former staff, to arrange the hardship payments in that case, and individual government departments that were the original employers are managing that, which is how we are able to ensure that the money is getting into people’s bank accounts within days, not weeks or months.