Speeches by Carling.

“I want to pick up on a brief question regarding the technology that Catherine asked just now. Mr Hernandez, a few moments ago you said that the way we are going to get out of this situation is through the deployment of the technology. Earlier on, Mr Clements, you said that earlier you had been having technology problem…”

“We have known about Capita’s failings for a long time. The NAO and the PAC have been ringing alarm bells about key milestones being missed throughout 2025. The Cabinet Office is also aware that the market for this sort of service is very small. There were only two providers, you have told us, at the last procurement. G…”

“What actions have they therefore put in place?”

“I think that will be helpful for us to see. Would you accept that the issues so far have constituted a critical performance failure?”

“We will perhaps dig into that further in the future, but finally, we talked to the Cabinet Office just now about the potential for them to insource the contract. Just now you were telling us how badly the data transfer went when you took it over from MyCSP. What reassurance can you give us that if the Government do dec…”

“Will those people have sufficient access to Capita systems to make a reasonable assessment of how easy it would be to extract the data?”

“So no one is resigning. It does not sound as though anyone has been sacked. Is the board of directors looking to impose any penalties on anyone within Capita for this failure?”

“I am talking about the systems rather than the data itself.”

“Could you outline your understanding of the circumstances and level of service failure under which your contract could be terminated?”

“Could you outline those levels to the Committee?”

“Minister, in your statement earlier this week, you said that were you able to bring this pension scheme in-house today, you would do so. We have talked about the barriers around immediate operational risk. We have talked about the IT system problems. Are there any other barriers to bringing it in-house? Bearing all tho…”

“Surely it is not unusual that you have to have a front end for a pension scheme. Is that not something that you designed in advance? Why did you have trouble getting it to—”

“The word “accountable” is interesting because it does not sound as though there has been much accountability. It is a private company and it is a matter for the board of directors; I just find it surprising. Mr Hernandez, you sit on the board, I understand, so I wonder whether you can answer this: has there been discus…”

“I have a final commercial follow-up question. What contractual options do you have to require Capita to make some modifications to its systems to make data extraction easier? Essentially, we need to avoid an outcome where it can hold us to ransom by virtue of saying, “We have made it so that every single person has to …”

“Will you commit to asking the independent auditors to make a point of looking at how quickly and easily the pension holders’ data could be extracted from Capita’s systems and uploaded into a hypothetical new system that we bring in under a future in-house model?”

“Thank you. That might be worth considering. May I ask one further question, Chair?”

“That is really helpful and slightly alarming in terms of there not being a general oversight mechanism. I have been concerned about a number of prevention of future death reports and the patterns that emerge.”

“We have touched on this a little bit. Do inquiry chairs and panel members have enough routes at the moment to raise the alarm when they feel a Government are not acting on their recommendations quickly or effectively? If not, what could those routes look like?”

“The House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee recommended that a new Committee of Parliament should scrutinise a Minister’s decision not to hold a public inquiry. We have talked about PACAC potentially performing that role. Could you give us a sense of what you think are the pros and cons of that approach?”

“I, too, thank the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate, and I, too, wish we had more time. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan), who made some difficult, but really important points. This is a timely deb…”