Health minister Edward Argar told parliament in March that there were nearly 20,000 NHS GP pension records in error, prompting the British Medical Association to call for an end to the outsourcing of NHS pensions administration.
As first reported on Pulse, on March 18, Argar responded to a question from Labour MP Feryal Clark over what assessment the government had made regarding the effectiveness of Primary Care Support England’s GP pension scheme administration.
NHS England awarded a seven to 10-year contract in 2015 to Capita, initially worth £330mn, to operate key PCSE services, including payments, transporting patient GP records, and pensions.
The service quality has come under scrutiny, with the BMA having lobbied for improvements to PCSE’s pensions administration for several years.
The time is long overdue to stop outsourcing this vital service
Dr Vishal Sharma, BMA
Argar told parliament that “no assessment has been made on the potential merits of moving the pensions administration service to the NHS Business Services Authority”.
He disclosed that there were 19,681 pension records in error, of which 7,127 related to leaver information and 12,554 referred to a year-end update.
He added that these errors could pertain to any employment on a member’s record and may not be linked to their GP posts.
‘There have been issues’
Argar said that NHS England and NHS Improvement, a body that oversees NHS foundation trusts and independent providers, holds a monthly governance board to monitor the PCSE’s service, which includes an assessment of quality and performance metrics.
While moving pensions administration in-house to the NHSBSA has not been assessed, Argar added that NHS England and NHS Improvement is weighing up “the future requirements and configuration of the PCSE’s services, ahead of potential procurement processes at the end of the current contract in 2025”.
“While PCSE are reliant on GP practices submitting information promptly, there have been issues relating to the administration of GP pension records,” he said.
Last year, a new pensions and payments portal for GP practices was mired with a number of problems, which included missing records and payments.
On April 1 2022, a notice at the head of the PCSE website said that a technical issue concerning the submission of forms for the estimates of GPs annual pensionable profits had been resolved, with the form now available for completion. The deadline for submitting estimates on PCSE Online was extended to 11.59pm on April 1.
Argar added that there were 34,662 GP pension records that have at least one GP post awaiting a year-end update for the 2020-21 period.
He said that possible reasons for the non-receipt of these updates included GPs not having submitted their annual figures, PCSE not being able to process updates due to previous missing years of information, or updates not having been submitted to the NHSBSA.
The government ‘has done nothing to address the issue’
Pensions Expert understands that errors in these pension records have decreased from as many as 100,000 since Capita’s contract began.
BMA pensions committee chair Dr Vishal Sharma told Pensions Expert that it was the ultimate responsibility of the NHSBSA to manage GPs’ pensions.
“The BMA has said for years that Capita, through PCSE, has completely failed to provide the necessary support to manage GPs’ pensions,” he said.
“The government recognises that PCSE’s poor management of GPs’ pension contributions has led to thousands of incorrect allocations, yet still it has done nothing to address the issue.
“The time is long overdue to stop outsourcing this vital service and NHSBSA must provide all aspects of pensions support for GPs.”
A Capita spokesperson said: “The GP Pensions and Payments Service through PCSE Online provides GPs and non-GP partners with greater convenience, more transparency and security when it comes to their pensions contributions data.
“Since the service launched in June 2021, we have seen users become more engaged with their pensions and we are pleased that over 29,000 submitted their end-of-year certificates by the 2022 deadline.
“We continue to work with GPs to address any errors and ensure their pensions information is up to date and accurate.”
NHSBSA breached Freedom of Information Act
In 2018, the National Audit Office released a report regarding NHS England and its contract with Capita. The NAO noted that “basic principles of the contract are still not agreed, which limits NHS England’s ability to hold Capita to account”.
The BMA lodged a complaint to the Pensions Regulator last year. The NHSBSA, meanwhile, reported NHS England to the watchdog, with a subsequent dispute between the BMA and the NHSBSA over transparency leading to a ruling against the latter by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
On June 17 2020, the BMA asked the NHSBSA via a freedom of information request whether the latter had reported PCSE to TPR, and for a copy of the report. The BMA then asked in August whether the NHSBSA had received a response.
The NHSBSA eventually confirmed on September 8 2020 that a complaint had been made, but that it would need time to weigh up the public interest of disclosing the report and whether a response had been received.
It clarified in October 2020 that it had referred NHS England, and not PCSE, to the pensions watchdog. It maintained that under Freedom of Information Act rules it was able to withhold the remaining requested information.
“Rather than addressing the issue, the NHSBSA went to extreme lengths to refuse to disclose this information to us, including by failing to comply with the FOIA,” Dr Sharma said.
The BMA contacted the ICO on January 11 2021 to complain about the way the matter had been handled.
According to the ICO’s decision notice on August 19 2021, the NHSBSA said that disclosure would “prejudice the commercial interests of third parties and itself”, arguing that “harm would accrue to NHS England, to PCSE and to its parent company, Capita”.
The ICO said that the NHSBSA in its response had failed to adequately explain why disclosing the requested information would prejudice it commercially, and ruled that the NHSBSA had breached FOIA rules.
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A NHSBSA spokesperson said: “We are reliant on NHS employers to provide accurate and timely employment information about their staff to allow us to update and administer individual member records. Where an employer has difficulty in submitting pension records for individual members on time we have a dedicated team available to help them.
“In accordance with our statutory responsibilities, the NHSBSA reported NHS England to TPR in 2018 in relation to the administration of a number of GP pension records.
“We take our responsibilities under the FOIA extremely seriously and fully complied with the information commissioner’s findings in a subsequent case relating to a freedom of information request about this report.”
