Civil Service Pensions

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

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

I thank my noble friend for all his work to raise this and to work so constructively with my colleagues here and at the other end. On the specifics, I heard what he said about the interest payment—that may be a little above my pay grade, but I will raise it with colleagues. I very much appreciate my noble friend’s questions about compensation, but he will appreciate that we are still in the middle of trying to stabilise the pension scheme. I genuinely did not think I would be here saying that; I had hoped that, by this point, we would be well beyond that and Capita would have met its milestone deadlines, but it has not. There are still 429 people waiting on ill health retirement cases, 131 of whom have been waiting for two months, and 618 outstanding death in service cases, with 237 waiting for more than four months, as well as the harrowing stories that we have heard. We need to fix that and then look at what comes next.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, this fiasco has made clear that Capita cannot deliver what its chief executive promises. Can the Minister tell the House how many contracts with government Capita still has, whether there is any overall evaluation of how those contracts are performing, and how confident the Government feel, despite her welcome assurance that contracts are regularly evaluated, that Capita is now up to the job of fulfilling those contracts?

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

The noble Baroness is right: the reality is that Capita provides contracts across government. In fact, we are its single biggest client, I believe. Capita holds a total of 85 contracts across the public sector: 39 in central government and 46 in the wider public sector. Some 87% of its KPIs—key performance indicators—are rated as good. But the noble Baroness is absolutely right, which is why we are now reviewing Capita’s performance across the government portfolio.