Pension Schemes

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

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

The noble Lord is aware that I have been a fan for many years and would listen to him with interest on every position he takes. I do, however, find it a little rich, given the positions that he previously held, to be lectured by him about a contract that was signed by the previous Government, following many contracts, not least the ones he talked about in defence, that were signed by the previous Government. I have already talked about how we will seek to move forward with insourcing.

I should put on record the fact that I am an honorary captain in the Royal Navy and was a member of the Defence Select Committee when some of these issues were being discussed about the Capita contract and the impact it had on recruitment into our Armed Forces. I believe and hope, however, that Serco is going to benefit from some of the changes that we as a Government undertook with Capita on the defence recruitment contract, which moved to Serco last month.

At the heart of this are—as I think we are all aware—our responsibilities towards taxpayers’ money and making sure that it is spent well, and that, whenever we choose to outsource, it is because we need to bring in different expertise that is not typically appropriate for us to hold centrally. But we need to make sure that this works and works for us, and I hope we will see that going forwards. But Capita is a supplier in more than 80 government contracts.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I am agnostic about insourcing or outsourcing. What I want is good service for the pensioners. Just to give an example of how insourcing might not always go right—and I appreciate that the Minister will probably have to write to me on this, because I am going slightly tangentially—the NHS Business Services Authority is an insourcing organisation for NHS pensioners. Given the failure that we have at the moment in that scheme, I ask the Minister: what steps could the Government take to ensure that the significant delays that NHS Pensions, in applying the annual inflation increase to pensioners who have been flagged for manual reconciliation due to their lifetime allowance, can be dealt with and solved, so that those pensioners who are waiting for their annual increase this year and from previous years get that annual increase, which they are entitled to under the 1971 Act?

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

As I said, I am very clear that pensions are deferred income and pensioners are entitled to them. In a previous iteration, I was a trade union officer who negotiated part of the Agenda for Change agreement. In terms of access and impact, it is key. The noble Lord will not be surprised that I do not have the detail of that pension scheme in front of me, but I will write to him with an update.