Bosses at outsourcing giant Capita have told MPs they followed routine industry practice in preparing to take over administration of the Civil Service Pension Scheme, and were given \u201cincomplete\u201d information about the scale of casework backlog being handed over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At a session of parliament\u2019s Public Accounts Committee yesterday, chief executive of Capita Public Services Richard Holroyd and Capita Pension Solutions managing director Chris Clements insisted the scale of the workload was not made clear. \u00a0<\/p>\n
MPs heard that there is now a backlog of around 120,000 cases, up from 86,000 when Capita formally took on administration of the pension scheme on 1 December last year. Thousands of newly-retired scheme members are still waiting to receive lump-sum payments and their regular pensions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Capita administers some 250 pension schemes on behalf of both public sector and private sector employers. It was awarded the CSPS contract, which is worth \u00a3239m over seven years, in late 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Committee members asked whether the firm had done its due diligence in relation to taking on the CSPS, and suggested the backlog should not have come as a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clements said Capita had worked with previous provider MyCSP and the Cabinet Office, which has overall responsibility for the pension scheme, in order to understand the scheme and prepare for the transfer. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did stand up all of the processes required, all of the technology required to provide the service,\u201d he said. \u201cIn terms of the open cases, we did receive data of the number and type and some analysis. But none of it was ever conclusive, nor did it show us the true entire picture.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Holroyd told MPs that new providers taking up a contract such as the CSPS don\u2019t get open access to the outgoing provider\u2019s operations ahead of a handover.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t sit alongside, see the database, see everything. That\u2019s not how the process works,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a service transition, of which we do many, and there is a normal process. Part of that process is that the authority, or the department, that commissions the service can see into both sides. We went through that normal process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Capita had previously said it was expecting a backlog in the region of 37,000 cases but the figure on 1 December turned out to be more than double that, and the backlog has continued to increase in the intervening weeks. At yesterday\u2019s session Holroyd and Clements said they had been particularly surprised to be presented with 16,000 unread emails from CSPS members<\/a> on the day the firm took control of the scheme. \u00a0<\/p>\n Public Accounts Committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown asked Holroyd and Clements whether Capita had effectively been lied to about the backlog, or whether the firm had failed to \u201cask the right questions\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Clements said the firm had been asking for more and more details about the backlog during the transfer process, but had been \u201csurprised at the exact nature\u201d of it when the full picture became clear on go-live day.\u00a0<\/p>\n Holroyd added: \u201cWe asked and were making clear that we were concerned about the level of the backlog because we could tell that it may not be as we were anticipating. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not for me to [comment on] the veracity of the answers. But what\u2019s apparent to us, and became apparent at go-live, was that the information we were given was not the whole picture.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Holroyd told MPs that Capita is in conversations with the Cabinet Office \u201cright now\u201d about the quality of the information it was given. \u00a0<\/p>\n