Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support retired civil servants who have not received their pensions from the Civil Service Pension Scheme in January.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Cabinet Office awarded the contract to administer the Civil Service Pension Scheme to Capita in November 2023 under the previous government.
The issues and delays facing a number of civil servants and pension scheme members in accessing their pensions is unacceptable.
Angela MacDonald, Deputy Chief Executive at HMRC, is working with the Cabinet Office and Capita to lead and support delivery of a full recovery plan. This includes commitments, with milestones, to immediately deal with priority cases, restore service levels and improve communication with affected members.
In response, we have set up a dedicated team to work urgently with Capita, with 650 full time staff across Government and Capita and with an aim to restoring normal service as soon as possible. We have agreed a clear recovery plan with Capita, which includes specific milestones and accountability targets for delivery.
Capita has prioritised the most urgent cases and by the end of February, all death in service cases were either settled or progressed to the final stage or awaiting a member response. A similar position will be reached for ill health retirement applications by mid-March.
Alongside these arrangements, Capita has prioritised payment of tax-free pension lump sums for members who had received quotations but were not in receipt of their benefits, with the vast majority of these having been paid in February.
Since 26 January, the recovery team has received detailed data on all the outstanding cases, allowing us to track progress and actively manage the most urgent situations.
The pension scheme continues to make monthly pension payments to approximately 730,000 existing pensioner members on time.
No former civil servant should be facing financial hardship as a result of delays to their pension and we are supporting government employers to provide direct support to people facing delays in their first payments.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with Capita about retired civil servants who have not received pensions from the Civil Service Pension Scheme in January.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Cabinet Office awarded the contract to administer the Civil Service Pension Scheme to Capita in November 2023 under the previous government.
The issues and delays facing a number of civil servants and pension scheme members in accessing their pensions is unacceptable.
Angela MacDonald, Deputy Chief Executive at HMRC, is working with the Cabinet Office and Capita to lead and support delivery of a full recovery plan. This includes commitments, with milestones, to immediately deal with priority cases, restore service levels and improve communication with affected members.
In response, we have set up a dedicated team to work urgently with Capita, with 650 full time staff across Government and Capita and with an aim to restoring normal service as soon as possible. We have agreed a clear recovery plan with Capita, which includes specific milestones and accountability targets for delivery.
Capita has prioritised the most urgent cases and by the end of February, all death in service cases were either settled or progressed to the final stage or awaiting a member response. A similar position will be reached for ill health retirement applications by mid-March.
Alongside these arrangements, Capita has prioritised payment of tax-free pension lump sums for members who had received quotations but were not in receipt of their benefits, with the vast majority of these having been paid in February.
Since 26 January, the recovery team has received detailed data on all the outstanding cases, allowing us to track progress and actively manage the most urgent situations.
The pension scheme continues to make monthly pension payments to approximately 730,000 existing pensioner members on time.
No former civil servant should be facing financial hardship as a result of delays to their pension and we are supporting government employers to provide direct support to people facing delays in their first payments.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, with regard to the findings of the report published on 20 November by the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, Module 2, 2A, 2B, 2C Report: Core decision-making and political governance, what assessment they have made of the advisability of lockdowns in a future pandemic.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government remains committed to learning the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and to better prepare the country for future pandemics.
The Government will consider the findings and recommendations in the Module 2 report in detail and respond in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they plan to appoint a Chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
An interim Chair of the Committee, Isabel Doverty, was appointed on 1 April 2025 by the Prime Minister. Ministers are considering options for the recruitment of a permanent Chair to lead ACOBA.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many competitions for public appointments have been paused before completion since 9 July 2024; what are the reasons for pausing these processes; and when they will be resumed.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The public appointments digital system, run by the Cabinet Office, enables departments to effectively and consistently manage their public appointment campaigns. It shows the current stage of a campaign and the outcome when completed. However, the system does not record if a campaign has been paused, and where campaigns are paused, the Cabinet Office does not collect the reasons for this or data on when such campaigns might be resumed. That would be a matter for individual sponsor departments and their ministers as part of the normal day-to-day management of the recruitment campaigns they run.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they plan to continue the process for appointing new members of the House of Lords Appointments Commission; and whether the appointment criteria have changed.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
Ministers are in the process of considering the next steps for this campaign.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 11 May (HL7431), what assessment they have made of the impact of the cost limit for responding to freedom of information requests remaining at £600 since 2004 on (1) any curtailment of the time that may be spent in dealing with freedom of information requests, and (2) any increase in the number of refusals of requests as a result of that curtailment.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Shadow Minister (Treasury)
There has been no curtailment, so no assessment has been made of any increase in the number of refusals as a result of the "curtailment"'. The cost limit is a calculation based on officials’ time and has remained at a flat rate of £25 per hour since 2004.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how the costs of responding to freedom of information requests involving the disclosure of emails are calculated; and when the limit of £600, beyond which cost the request can be refused, was last uprated.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Shadow Minister (Treasury)
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows public authorities to refuse to deal with any requests where they estimate that responding to the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”, known as the “cost limit”.
If a public authority calculates that responding to a request will take it over the appropriate limit it is not obliged to provide a substantive response. The cost limit is calculated at a flat rate of £25 per hour and since 2004 has been set at £600 for central government departments and £450 for other public authorities. Public authorities can only include certain activities when estimating whether responding to a request would breach the cost limit. These are: establishing whether information is held; locating and retrieving information; and extracting relevant information from the document containing it.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many members will be appointed to (1) the Partnership Council, (2) each of the 19 Specialised Committees, and (3) each of the four Working Groups established by the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement; and what plans they have to disseminate information about (a) the membership, and (b) the proceedings of those bodies.
Answered by Lord Frost
Each of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement’s committees is co-chaired by a representative of the UK and the EU. I am the UK co-chair of the Partnership Council. Senior officials in the relevant government departments will be the co-chairs of the Specialised Committees and Working Groups.
The UK delegation for each meeting will be decided to ensure appropriate expertise based on the agenda.
We are committed to facilitating appropriate Parliamentary scrutiny of our actions in these committees, and discussions are ongoing with the relevant Parliamentary committees. We will share draft agendas with Parliament before each Partnership Council and meetings of the Specialised Committees, and issue a statement on the proceedings before Parliament before and after each meeting of the Partnership Council.
Asked by: Baroness Deech (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any attempts by foreign organisations or states to reverse the UK's decision to withdraw from the EU by funding or otherwise supporting domestic organisations.
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
The Government takes the security and integrity of our democratic processes extremely seriously but has not seen evidence of any successful interference in the EU Referendum by any foreign government.
Political parties and referendum campaigners can only accept donations from “permissible donors” which includes individuals on the electoral roll, companies registered in and conducting business in the UK and a number of other UK-registered bodies. Accepting a donation that is not permissible is a criminal offence. The Electoral Commission has powers to fine parties or campaigners who accept impermissible donations. The Government will continue to work to strengthen our democratic processes.
We remain vigilant against attempts to erode trust in our democratic processes and institutions and will defend the UK from all forms of malign foreign state interference.