No time to wait for insourcing, Capita rally hears

Thousands of retired and partially retired civil servants have experienced late or missing pension payments as a result of Capita's maladministration of the scheme, plunging many into financial crises. 

Ahead of an anticipated parliamentary select committee evidence hearing tomorrow, a special demonstration took place at 1pm outside Old Palace Yard, where PCS members, pensioners and campaign supporters gathered to tell the government: “Bring civil service pensions back in-house and create a compensation scheme for those affected.”

The protest comes as the government sends signals that it is considering bringing the scheme back in house to be serviced by civil servants. 

Hours before today’s rally at Westminster, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the government’s paymaster general, said that this crisis “highlights the severe limitations of outsourcing the civil service pension scheme,” suggesting that he would “in-source the scheme today if he could avoid creating “an immediate, catastrophic operational vacuum.”

Real hardship

Opening the rally, Bev Laidlaw, national president of PCS, said that the extraordinary backlog figures “aren't just statistics - these are our members, our friends, and our families.”

PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote likewise described these delays not just “as administrative errors,” since they are “causing real hardship to people's lives.”

“We see this story time and time again with outsourcing and privatisation,’ she said. “Profitable corporations having to be bailed out by the public sector because of their own incompetence and the taxpayer picking up the cost.”

Fran called on the government to bring the pensions administration back in-house and establish a compensation scheme for all those affected by the crisis. She also argued that it must suspend any further contract awards involving Capita. 

Speaking on behalf of PCS’s associate and retired members' associations (ARMs), Tony Conway pointed out how Capita had received contracts in the DWP, MOJ, Home Office, and Defra, despite the government knowing of its repeated failures. 

“Is it a good company to trust?” he asked the demonstrators. “You wouldn’t put your life savings in there and yet we're expected to allow them to administer our pensions?”

For his part, Martin Cavanagh, vice president of the PCS DWP Group, characterised the Capita crisis as a “national disgrace”, with thousands of people forced into “extending their working lives because they can't take the risk of being put in abject poverty as a result of Capita’s failings,”

Martin also sounded a warning about the possibility of Capita being handed the civil service contract for payroll:

“If devastation has been caused by maladministration on pensions, what is going to happen with payroll? What is going to happen when civil servants don’t get their salaries on time?

“What is going to happen when civil servants have to make begging calls for money because they can't afford to pay their rents or mortgages?”

‘We can’t wait’

John McDonnell MP, chair of the PCS Parliamentary Group, told the rally that it was “incomprehensible how Capita got this contract in the first place,” pointing out its various failures on previous public sector contracts.

Although he acknowledged the government’s plans to review the administration of the scheme, he said that PCS must be involved in any discussions – and warned that the “human suffering” caused by the scandal will only worsen unless urgent action is taken. 

“We can't wait for the long term," he said. “We can't stand by and watch this company rip us off, make massive profits and pay their chief executive hundreds of thousands of pounds, when our people are living in poverty as a result of their failure.” 

Striking a similar note, fellow MP Andy McDonald claimed that today’s statement from the paymaster general was “more than a recognition” that the scheme will eventually be insourced, even if the crisis “reflects very badly on the government”. However, he added: “We haven't got the time to wait for this.”

Other speakers included the TUC’s director of organising, Sian Elliott, who repeated our demand for the government to “deliver on its promise to deliver the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation.” While Lorraine Beavers MP, citing her trade union background, closed off the rally with a promise to continue fighting for this oft-promised wave of insourcing.

You can email your MP using our quick tool to ask them to intervene in this civil service pension scheme crisis.