Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many probation staff have been affected by the administrative error by Shared Services on pension contributions; and whether he plans to compensate staff affected by that error.

There have been 2336 National Probation Staff who have been affected by the recent problems relating to pensions contributions. There are currently no plans to compensate these staff.

There is a regular governance structure in relation to the provision of Shared Services, which reviews the service delivery of our provider, Shared Services Connected Limited to the Department. These mechanisms regularly review issues and incidents and have fully managed the recent issues in relation to pension contributions. These mechanisms have been effective in the management and closure of the defects.

Following the migration of the departments HR and payroll data to the new cross government Single Operating Platform a small number of defects have been identified and corrected. These led to the under-collection of pension contributions for some staff. These have been corrected with the final correction being applied for inclusion in this month’s payroll and the full contributions have been paid to the pension scheme administrator. The contribution under collection only affected 4 types of overtime rate and 2 absence scheme calculations with the remaining payroll elements all being subject to the correct pensions deduction. The departments migration to the Single Operating Platform was subject to formal programme control and governance and these programme mechanisms have been used to resolve these issues.