Speeches by McKinnell.

“Okay. As long as all the information is correct when it comes to you, you will pay out a lump sum. But obviously that is not going to be the case for quite a lot of people. Therefore, you defer that to the Cabinet Office for a hardship loan?”

“That requires the process to work out how much they might be owed before any of those payments are made.”

“It is around 800 people waiting for that, did you say?”

“You do not provide any of the money towards that process.”

“You are not able to give us a sense at all today of how many people might be awaiting payments still.”

“In order to meet your contractual expectations that would enable that.”

“Okay. Can you give us an update on how many of those are still outstanding, in terms of Capita members?”

“Chair, my apologies, but could I also just put this on the record? We should not be talking in terms of hardship, and it is welcome that you both don’t, and I don’t think anyone should, because actually this is about money that is not paid to people who are owed it. Therefore, if you make a payment—I very much hope you…”

“I appreciate that this is, I would hope, your number one workstream and priority at the moment. You will appreciate that, as Members of Parliament, we are contacted on a range of issues. However, this is the second biggest issue in my constituency inbox. That is to give you a sense of how important this is to constitue…”

“Or you will refer them?”

“You will advise them to refer themselves—”

“This does not quite make sense to me in terms of the evidence you have given previously. The widows have been described to you, and the people who have been waiting since October. You are making it sound like a very efficient process, with people self-declaring as being in hardship and you being able to issue them with…”

“Yes, but how is that going? That is what I asked, and you are not able to give me an answer.”

“And then those who are simply waiting for a calculation—are you able to give a figure for those left with nothing in the interim?”

“I have to say that it is not clear at all. I have some figures here that were, I believe, correct up to 23 February 2026. They say that you received 1,804 hardship cases: 798 were from active retirees in the last 12 months, 923 deferred for longer than 12 months, and 864 have had a lump sum paid. That could be the whol…”

“Sorry, how did you describe that? As a hardship—”

“Right, but if they are struggling with hardship, they may refer themselves—”

“We have obviously had the update that HMRC is providing surge capacity to assist Capita in reaching the outcomes that were committed to in March—well, that is now. How is that going? Are you still requiring the HMRC surge support, and to what extent? Has that been helpful?”

“Yes. How many requests for lump sum payments have not been paid yet?”

“Do you expect, in terms of the timeframe, that they will still be required?”