NHS Pensions

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I am very glad that the noble Lord has given me that option, which I will gladly take. Perhaps it would be helpful to your Lordships’ House for me to say that the deadline to issue remedial service statements was 1 April or later. That was not achievable because of the level of technical complexity, capacity, and delays in HMT and HMRC setting out lower-level policy requirements under the previous Government, so Minister Karin Smyth extended this deadline last week and published a new timetable. Separately, 137,000 higher-earning members of the NHS pension scheme require remedial pension savings statements as part of their remedy. The deadline for that was 6 October. HMRC did not allow this to be amended. The current position is that, to date, 94,012 statements of the 137,000 have been issued. These delays are due fundamentally to the annual allowance element of the remedy being poorly designed and, again, late requirements provided by HMT and HMRC. To say that this is a knotty problem would be underestimating it.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

I thank the Minister for the assurance in the Statement that no individual member will in the long term suffer financial detriment. However, is she able to explain how the NHS Business Services Authority issued 23,000 inaccurate statements against 57,000, which is over 30%, and what are we doing to get efficiency and effectiveness from this authority?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I appreciate the point that the noble Baroness refers to. The priority is to get this matter resolved, as she will appreciate. With respect to the NHSBSA, we will also be working closely with it to ensure that the correct service is given in future. Obviously, I want to see this put right to assure people as soon as possible.