Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate he has made of the number of retired civil servants that have been required to repay overpaid pension benefits due to administrative errors made by civil service pension providers in the last ten years; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of these instances on the people affected.

The administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme is the responsibility of the Cabinet Office. While the scheme does not publicly report overpayments due to administrator errors, in the last ten years overpayments caused solely by ‘administrative errors’, resulted in a total of 381.

The scheme follows the HM Treasury guidance on “Managing Public Money” which requires the scheme, where possible, to recover any money that a member is not entitled to. Recognising that recovery of overpayments may cause distress we work closely with individual members to ensure that payment recovery plans are affordable, take account of hardship and minimise the impact for the member both in terms of finances and wellbeing. This usually includes setting payment plans to recover monies owed over a reasonable period of time.