Nick Thomas-Symonds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Sept 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  My constituent Danielle lost her husband Chris in a road traffic collision in 2024. She was left studying to become a nurse with three children to care for and found the bereavement support payment system to be wholly inadequate to give her the support that she needed. Will the Leader of the House ask the relevant Minister from the Department of Work and Pensions to write to me about this matter, and may we have a debate on it, please?

• 6 Jul 2026 · Civil Service Pensions · Hansard source

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  Yes, we will continue to work with trade unions and other stakeholders. Yes, it is correct that £9.9 million in milestone payments has been withheld, but my hon. Friend can rest assured that I will not hesitate to continue to use all commercial levers if there is poor performance.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Civil Service Pensions · Hansard source

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  I want to provide the House with an important update on the administration of the civil service pension scheme. Capita was awarded this contract in November 2023. It had two years of transition to prepare, and its senior leadership gave me explicit personal assurances ahead of the handover that they were fully capable of managing the workload and that they were ready for a successful transition. Indeed, the chief executive promised that technological improvements would create a flagship use case for the largest AI-enabled pension scheme in the country. It is clear that non-delivery of technology has been a fundamental part of Capita’s inability to deliver. The reality is that it was completely unprepared and its system was overwhelmed, which resulted in a backlog that skyrocketed to a staggering 120,000 unresolved cases. In response, I intervened immediately and established the Cabinet Office pensions recovery taskforce. Capita committed to two critical recovery targets: an end of April milestone to clear the inherited arrears, and an end of June milestone by which point it promised a complete return to standard contractually required levels. Capita missed its own April milestone. The end of June deadline has arrived, and I regret to inform the House that Capita has failed to meet that milestone, too. Seven months on from taking over operations, too many pension scheme members still face unacceptable delays after years of dedicated public service. Since my last statement on this matter, thousands of quotations have been issued and pensions put into payment. Capita had committed to clearing the quotes backlog by today, but I am afraid that the reality remains very different. As of the end of June, there are still more than 6,700 quotations outstanding for past retirement dates, and more than 4,100 bereavement cases on which Capita could take action. These are the most harrowing stories, affecting devastated scheme members and grieving families. My officials have forcefully escalated those systemic back-office failures directly to Capita’s senior leadership, demanding an immediate investigation and resolution. I have to be frank with the House: what progress has been achieved is due to the significant additional capability provided by the Cabinet Office pensions recovery taskforce, and a team of more than 140 officials whom I have “surged” into the process. Let me also say that public money will not fund Capita’s failings. We will recover every single penny of these surge costs directly from Capita, and I will not remove a single member of the team until the service is permanently fixed and fully restored. Across core areas of pension payments, quotations and complaints, the operational reality remains deeply concerning, and although the speed of quote issuance has accelerated over the past month, it still leaves more than 6,700 outstanding quotes to be processed, as of the end of June, for past retirement dates. Let me turn to the subject of parliamentary correspondence. The volume of MP complaints remains too high—there are more than 1,900 outstanding constituent cases. I understand that Capita resolved nearly 700 last week, but another 500 or so complaints were raised, so this remains all too current an issue. When I last reported to the House, the figure stood at 1,500. The growth of the backlog is completely unacceptable. Capita has clearly failed to manage the correspondence effectively, to the extent that I have had to ask the pensions recovery taskforce to step in. Indeed, the situation has been so faltering that the Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Test (Satvir Kaur), has written to Mr Speaker about it. Because of Capita’s persistent failures, alongside a wider, completely unacceptable failure in its overall MP engagement, demonstrated—as was reported to me by Members from across the House—by a poorly co-ordinated MP drop-in session at the end of May, I had to intervene again. I ordered the pensions recovery taskforce to take direct operational control and establish virtual surgeries for MPs and caseworkers running every weekday. I hope that has provided at least a direct route for parliamentary offices to try to secure updates. Since I launched that initiative in May, we have delivered more than 250 virtual surgeries, supporting more than 150 Members from across the House. Let me now turn to the steps that I am taking to protect scheme members. I have no doubt that all Members will agree with me that the service that Capita has provided has been dreadful. We need to take further robust measures. First, I will continue to apply the most stringent commercial levers. We are executing robust, continuous action with immediate financial consequences. We have already hit Capita’s bottom line by withholding £9.9 million in payments, because the Government will only ever pay for what is successfully delivered. I find this failure remarkable in the light of the personal assurances given to me by the chief executive ahead of the transfer. Those assurances have not been met. Core outputs are deficient, and Capita is failing even to make basic functionality work. I know that many Members are calling for the immediate termination of the contract and the insourcing of the service, but if I were to terminate the contract straightaway, that would clearly cause severe disruption to the payroll. I have to manage this so that the payroll is operated effectively; what I cannot do is create an immediate, catastrophic operational vacuum. I cannot replace a complex pension operation overnight. However, I have instructed my officials to bring together a broad range of stakeholders and experts to consider, in line with the Government’s strategy, how scheme members can best be served by a long-term, durable delivery of the scheme. Let no one think that I or the Government are accepting the status quo. This episode highlights the severe limitations of outsourcing the civil service pension scheme. I say openly to the House that if I could insource this operation today, I would do so. None the less, it is Government policy to insource, in line with our manifesto commitment to deliver “the biggest wave of insourcing of public services in a generation”, and this pension scheme could be a prime candidate for insourcing in the future. That future is being actively shaped by the Government’s announcement on 17 June of a new public interest test that will end outsourcing by default. From April 2027, all contracts over £1 million in value must be assessed for in-house viability before renewal, and Departments exceeding £100 million in annual spend must develop five-year insourcing strategies. This framework builds the exact long-term capability that we need, shifting our focus from short-term pricing to service quality and operational resilience. To ensure full accountability, we are executing our contractual right to deploy independent auditors immediately to conduct a technical review of systems, data integrity and compliance with statutory duties. We are also beginning the process to appoint a remedial adviser, at Capita’s expense, to force rectification directly on the ground. I am not ruling out further interventions, but we need to build the unvarnished evidence base that will serve as a strict prerequisite for further formal escalation, including potential litigation or step-in remedies, should performance fail to improve. In October, the House will receive a further update on the findings of the independent audit, the performance of the remedial adviser and the longer-term structural options being considered, including meeting our manifesto commitment by bringing the scheme in-house. Let me finish by saying this. Public servants who dedicated their working lives to this country deserve absolute financial security and unwavering dignity in retirement, not corporate failure, empty promises and severe administrative failure. I hope the House will see the uncompromising line in the sand that I am drawing today. I will continue to apply commercial pressure and ensure full accountability, and we will find a way forward that delivers for the people who deliver for this country. I commend this statement to the House.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Payment Scheme · Hansard source

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  Once again, this has been an excellent debate. It has been excellent in tone and excellent in terms of hon. and right hon. Members speaking about their constituents. I will try to deal with some of the issues, but there will be others, particularly issues of detail, that I will address if Members write to me. I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on his work as the able deputy for my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) on the all-party parliamentary group. The 1986 date is simply because the last medical study identified as unethical by Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry was from 1984. The date goes forward a bit to try to ensure that we capture everything; that is the significance of the date. He and I have had the discussion about interferon during the debate some weeks ago. I agree with him and the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), on the duty of candour. It is hugely important that we drive that forward. If my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) could, will he send me that list of questions about his late constituent, Jane Fitzgerald? I just make one observation: there is a difference for those who have died versus those who are living, but I point out that money gets paid to dependants in the first circumstance, which should be taken into account. I will come back to him in detail if he sends me those questions. I once again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst for his work. I agree with him on the sympathetic approach to evidence, on the importance of the ongoing dialogue and certainly on the importance of speed. I could not agree more with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), about clear communication; it is something that I speak about frequently, and I will continue to do so. On the review mechanism, people can ask IBCA for a review. Beyond that, they have the option of a first-tier tribunal and, beyond that, the courts. The initial stage is a review by IBCA. Although IBCA is operationally independent, I entirely agree with his point about me being available to offer appropriate support where necessary. The bulk of infected people should be paid by the end of 2027 and the bulk of affected people by the end of 2029. However, those are backstops, not targets. As I have often said to the House, the aim is to speed up those claims and get to that point of exponential growth in payments of the affected claims. The point about care was raised by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire. The care award is not paid directly to the person who provided care simply because if we did that, we would be asking IBCA to determine who provided the care and to go to affected people for evidence that they provided care. We could even end up with IBCA having to mediate disputes between multiple people talking about care. Going down that particular route could have led to further delays, and that is why we have taken the approach that we have. It is absolutely right that these regulations reflect the majority of what we heard in the consultation and that we do make changes. The regulations complete the Government’s response to the additional report, but as Members across the House have said, the hard work to deliver the compensation must now accelerate. It is our duty to remember the tragedy inflicted on thousands of people and to bring real change not just to this compensation scheme, but beyond that, and not least to the duty of candour, which is another of Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendations. I hope that colleagues across the House will join me this evening in supporting these regulations. I commend them to the House. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That the draft Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 18 June, be approved.