Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, in the context of the processing of Civil Service Pension quotes, (a) what retirement month is currently being processed and (b) whether he expects all outstanding full and partial retirement quotations to be processed by the end of June 2026.

The Cabinet Office awarded Capita the contract to administer the Civil Service Pension Scheme in November 2023 under the previous government. The current delays facing scheme members are entirely unacceptable, and this Government has taken firm action to resolve them through a clear recovery plan with strict delivery milestones. We have deployed additional resources to expedite priority cases, ensuring that serving and former staff receive the high standard of service they deserve. Regular progress updates remain available to members via the pension portal and Gov.uk.

Capita is under a firm mandate to restore full service delivery to standard contractual levels by the end of June 2026. We are actively exploring the use of all available commercial and contractual levers and continue to withhold milestone payments for missed transition deliverables. All options remain on the table if they fail to meet the June deadline.

Pension quotation requests are prioritised on the basis of the retirement date to the extent that Capita has all of the required data and information to process the quotation. This may mean that some later retirement dates are processed ahead of earlier retirement dates. Currently Capita is aiming to process all quotation requests received prior to 5 June, where full data and information is available, before the end of June.

Capita were initially instructed to prioritise and clear the most urgent cases such as Death in Service and Ill-Health during February and March. While Capita previously assured us that performance standards for Death in Service and Ill-Health were being met by mid-March, recent information continues to demonstrate unacceptable delays in some ill-health retirement and death-in-service cases. We have urgently escalated this to Capita, who are actively investigating the underlying data and reasons for these continued delays.