Speeches by McKinnell.

“Or you will refer them?”

“You will advise them to refer themselves—”

“How would you describe that? As a lump sum payment?”

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

“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?”

“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…”

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

“Could you be more specific in terms of how it is operating? For example, how many full-time staff are working on the scheme? How many HMRC staff does that include? Are you adding surge capacity from the Capita end as well?”

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

“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?”

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

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

“That is literally what I just said to you; I said around 800 people who you are waiting to process.”

“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?”

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

“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?”

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

“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…”

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