Government accused of ‘having a laugh’ over Capita contract award
During questions to Cabinet Office ministers on Thursday (5), MPs raised serious concerns about Capita's Civil Service Pensions failure and questioned why the company is being rewarded with another lucrative government contract.
Capita is currently failing to pay pensions to thousands of retired civil servants, leaving many without income and forcing government intervention. Despite this, it has been awarded another government contract worth up to £950m over ten years to handle the payroll of more than 250,000 civil servants in DWP, DEFRA, Home Office and the Ministry of Justice as well as related arms length bodies.
Cross party MPs posed question after question on the Civil Service Pension Scheme crisis and the effect it is having on retired civil servants and their families.
Kim Johnson MP (Labour) reminded the minister about the Labour Party manifesto pledge to bring in ‘the greatest wave of insourcing‘ and asked, “when are the government going to stop rewarding failure by giving contracts to outsourced companies?”
Gareth Bacon MP (Conservative) called for a full review following parliamentary secretary in the Cabinet Office, Satvir Kaur MP’s assurance that the government will do all that they can to hold Capita to account. PCS is demanding a full open and independent review into both MyCSP and Capita's handling of this contract.
The Cabinet Office’s handling of the transfer was called into question by Brendan O’Hara (SNP) who stated that the privatisation of the administration of the scheme “was nothing short of catastrophic.” He said, “government were well warned about Capita and the Cabinet Office must shoulder some blame for their responsibility in this fiasco.”
“Having a laugh?”
Lorraine Beavers MP (Labour) asked why Capita was even being considered to deliver HR and payroll for a quarter of a million civil servants. She said: “Are they having a laugh, given Capita’s appalling performance in administrating the civil service pension scheme?” She urged the minister to urgently review the procurement of this contract and commit to bring it in-house.
Thousands of PCS members have already written to their local MPs asking them to support our demands over Capita’s handling of the pensions contract.
You can email your MP about the Capita pension failure.
You can also email your MP about the awarding of the shared services contract.