Satvir Kaur
Main Page: Satvir Kaur (Labour - Southampton Test)Department Debates - View all Satvir Kaur's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Satvir Kaur)
The issues and delays that a number of civil servants and pension scheme members have encountered when accessing their pensions after a lifetime of service are completely unacceptable. Members of the House will have heard my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General’s statement to the House yesterday on the Government’s robust recovery plan to stabilise the service, while ensuring that support is in place for those impacted. We will continue to use every commercial lever possible to hold Capita to account so that public servants get the quality service they deserve as soon as possible.
Rachel Taylor
Happy Warwickshire day, Mr Speaker, and happy St George’s day.
My constituent Jillian dedicated her life to public service for 34 years before retiring. She is owed more than £2,000 in a lump sum from her civil service pension. She has constantly tried to get in touch with Capita over the past six months. She has submitted online forms, rung multiple times and has been told that Capita is not hitting its complaints target. After being on hold for several hours, a call operator told her that they could not tell her when she would receive an answer. This is unacceptable. Can the Government tell me what they are doing to support retired civil servants who have been left in limbo by Capita?
Satvir Kaur
I also wish my hon. Friend a happy Warwickshire day and a happy St George’s day. I thank her constituent Jillian for her public service of 34 years. I agree with my hon. Friend that the service that Jillian has experienced is completely unacceptable. My hon. Friend will know that we have taken a number of measures, including deploying a surge team to help stabilise the service, and we continue to hold Capita to account for poor service. I encourage her and other Members to direct affected constituents to the hardship loans we have made available to support those impacted. If she sends me the details of Jillian’s case, I will make sure to look out for them.
Christine Jardine
Happy St George’s day. Yesterday, in the statement, the Paymaster General was kind enough to say that he would look into the case of one of my constituents who is afraid that she will lose her house because she has no income and cannot get access to her civil service pension. However, I have several other affected constituents, one who is still working full time and is a full-time carer. They were supposed to retire in January but cannot, because they cannot get access to their pension. Can I meet the Minister to discuss what is happening and how we can get Capita to pay attention to this issue and to look for a way forward?
Satvir Kaur
I thank the hon. Member for raising both of those distressing cases, and I would of course be happy to meet her to discuss them.
Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)
Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Satvir Kaur)
Departments are responsible for setting their own performance plans, subject to centrally set performance management frameworks. This Government are focused on a high-performing civil service, which is why we have recently announced changes to the senior civil service performance system that will see the performance of top civil servants linked to key performance indicators set by their Ministers, and underperformers held to tougher standards.
Mr Bedford
Our constituents must interact with many Government agencies each week to renew their passport or driving licence or to submit their tax returns. Despite record numbers of bureaucrats, productivity remains low, which results in many errors and vast delays for our constituents. The answers to my written parliamentary questions confirm that there is no proper performance management of our civil servants, corrective action or even dismissals for continued poor performance. Without the usual platitudes about how hard civil servants work, I want to know what the Government are doing about the thousands of poorly performing civil servants who are costing our constituents millions of pounds each year.
Satvir Kaur
I think it is ironic that Opposition Members complain about civil servants but did nothing when they were in power. Instead, this Government are updating the performance management framework, incentivising those who deliver and tackling underperformance as soon as it arises. To do this, we are changing the rules to ensure a closer, more effective link between pay and performance, with larger awards for the highest performers, and strengthening the minimum standards so that those who fail to manage the performance of their teams are quickly identified.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
Happy St George’s day to you, Mr Speaker. Can the Minister set out what progress the Government have made in cracking down on fraudsters who seek to defraud the public sector and what success they have had in clawing back money on behalf of hard-working taxpayers?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Satvir Kaur)
The Government have taken robust action through our Public Sector Fraud Authority. There is a huge amount of work being done. In fact, last year we saved the public purse more than £7.5 billion. A lot has been done, but there is lots more to do, and I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that further.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
Happy St George’s day, Mr Speaker. A business I met recently raised concerns about grid resilience to Chinese sabotage. Given the precedent set on Huawei and 5G, what steps is the Cabinet Office taking to exclude high-risk Chinese components from our critical energy infrastructure?