Civil Service Pensions: Capita

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right that this was discussed by the Public Accounts Committee last year. Following that, and the assurances we got before it went live, the Paymaster-General met with Capita and it confirmed 194 full-time equivalent staff put in place to mitigate delays in automation testing, contingency plans and triaging arrangements, and then a series of independent assurance reviews were undertaken in advance. That is not to say that there are not now serious concerns about what has happened in the last month.

To be clear, our priority at this point is fixing what is broken and making sure that the system stands up. This is a very complicated pension system: it is the third-largest in government. However, I am sure that there will be numerous opportunities to discuss what went wrong and what we need to learn from this. But I want to assure noble Lords that we are taking this with the utmost seriousness, which is why Angela MacDonald, the Second Perm Sec at HMRC, is leading the recovery taskforce. There is a 150-person government surge team supporting the Capita contract, and we are working with Capita and meeting it every day to make sure that these KPIs are being met.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that one of the areas that will be prioritised—I do not know whether she is aware of this—is that former Civil Service employees who are living overseas now cannot access the online portal, so, in addition to not being able to get through on the telephone, they cannot use the online service at all. Can that be fixed as a matter of absolute urgency for those people?

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

I can reassure the noble Baroness that, as part of the recovery taskforce timetable, we expect that the online portal will be up and running in its completion at the end of next month. By the end of this month we are prioritising dealing with the people who cannot access money and those who desperately need it in terms of hardship. So, yes, I can give an assurance that by the end of next month the portal will be fully operational.