Civil Service Pension Scheme: Administration

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) on securing this important debate. I declare my interest as a trade union member, and refer to the fact that I received support from the trade unions at the last election.

It is really important that we recognise who we are talking about: ordinary people, ordinary folk. Many of the people who we are discussing have worked in the civil service for many Government Departments and, shamefully, have been claiming benefits for years because their wages are that low. That is the vast majority of the people we are talking about. They brought us through the pandemic—let us not forget that. There are a lot of them in my constituency of Blyth and Ashington; I have a number of examples, which I am not sure I will be able to get through.

The root problem here, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned, is privatisation. The initial privatisation by the Tories was in 2012. It was initially DWP/Capita. Then it was MyCSP, which was a disaster. How on earth is Capita getting a secret contract agreed in 2023 to take place in 2025? It is an absolute outrage. Look at the situation now. They promised transition would be fine, but MyCSP had 16,000 unopened emails when Capita took the scheme back over. There are 1.7 million scheme members and a backlog of 90,000; there are 8,500 retired members not in receipt of any pension—and what about those in ill health and the bereaved? There is hardship, and there are issues with the interest-free loans that were promised.

[Dan Carden]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. Is it not important that this Labour Government show how they are different, and deal differently with those failed privatisations?

[Ian Lavery]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. I will refer to three of my constituents. Mr Brown, from Bedlington, who retired in December and cannot get any response whatsoever to his inquiries. Mr Newell, who worked in the civil service for 40 years and has a number of questions regarding Capita, which I will send to my right hon. Friend the Minister. He spent 21 hours in total on the telephone waiting for a response, and he had additional problems. Mr Davies from Choppington raised a problem with the portal, where people cannot access details.

Those are three real issues. We need to pause the voluntary exit scheme and focus on those people who are not in receipt of their pensions at this moment in time. There needs to be more resourcing, with more staff employed to get rid of the backlog. Again, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said, we need to consider whether Capita is carrying out the job it is supposed to. It is time to have a look at Capita and see whether it is doing the job correctly. If it is not, penalties must apply.