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Showing 31 of 2,354,908 contributions. Latest 30 days: 0. Coverage: 12 May 1999 — 25 Mar 2026.
John Mason (Glasgow Shettleston) (Ind) Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
I will build on some of the things that the convener has already asked about. I did not quite understand the split or the fact that some are an immediate choice—the retired people—and some are deferred choice. I think that the figures that we had previously were 2,800 out of 6...
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Of the 65,000?
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
I became aware of the issue when a couple of retired police officers came to me about it. I think that the convener asked you this, but why was it not prioritised? Is it not more important for people who are dependent on their pension now than it is for those who will not get ...
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Can you give a rough idea of what you mean when you say “majority”—is it three quarters?
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Even if 70 per cent are on the right pension, 30 per cent are on the wrong pension, so the 30 per cent of the retired people are the ones that it is really hitting right now.
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
It is probable that none of us here will understand all the details, but does it require a very different skill set to focus in on that 30 per cent?
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Was it due to a lack of skills that you could not allocate more people to the retired work and fewer to the deferred work?
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
You said that some retired people are already on the best pension and some will get an improvement, but are there some people who have to pay back money? In this week’s 1919 magazine, there is an interview with three retired police officers who are having to pay money back, so...
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
That is especially unfortunate for people who are in ill health, disabled or whatever.
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
However, you think that that is quite a small number. Okay. You have mentioned that this is part of a UK problem and that you are broadly in line with the other agencies. Again, that article from 1919 magazine suggests that some of the folk down south are further ahead. It m...
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Can you explain that to me? What do you mean by “the ability to put things into payment”?
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Okay, I think I am beginning to understand that bit. If you issue an RSS and people agree, within a couple of months they will be getting the correct payment and so on, whereas in other schemes—
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Some other schemes are issuing the RSS and then it is taking a longer period for people to get it actually paid.
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
The other area I want to touch on, which was raised by constituents as well, is the whole question of communication. Their feeling was that they had raised queries and did not get any response or it was very delayed. Has that improved or is that still a problem? 10:45
John Mason Ind Committee
02 Dec 2025
McCloud Remedy
Is that a one-off or does it happen regularly?
John Mason (Glasgow Shettleston) (Ind) Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
I will touch on some of the issues that have already been raised. I am not particularly keen on comparing with England, but I was struck by the point in your submission that“National Police Chiefs Council figures for police schemes show 96% delivery at December 2025”.You also ...
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
That is slightly reassuring.Your submission says that three public sector schemes in the UK are struggling or do not even have deadlines. You are ahead of them, obviously, but three does not seem to be very many.
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
Yes, I fully understand that. However, it will obviously still affect UK finances—the figure for the UK is quite a big number—and, by default, our finances. Has nobody done a renewed estimate?
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
Do you mean not that you are aware of?
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
We will probably never know the true estimates—certainly not in my lifetime. We sometimes look at long-term planning in this committee, and I am sure that they do at Westminster as well, so I would have hoped that somebody down there would be making new estimates.I take your p...
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
I fully accept that you are going to encounter problems. The question for the committee is about how well you are anticipating those problems. If you give us a forecast of 40 per cent but we hit 26 per cent or 30 per cent, that suggests that you may have been a little bit over...
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
As you pointed out, it is too late for this committee, but not for successor committees in the future. The more realistic that you can be, the better. It would be better to build in some caution so that if you do a bit better, everyone is delighted. I am afraid that, if the de...
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
You talked about taking the deferred and immediate choice ones together, but my understanding was that no statements have been issued for deferred members.
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
I accept that, for people who have not yet retired, it is less important, although people are planning to retire, and what they get in their pension will be a factor in that.Tied to that is an article that appeared in the 1919 Magazine, which is produced by the Police Federati...
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
I understand that, and, therefore, I have some sympathy with you. However, it is having quite a serious impact on the 90 or so people in that cohort, is it not? They are having to continue working when they might not have wanted to.
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
Perhaps we should be pressuring MPs to do something on that.Did you say that a minority of 26 per cent are choosing to change when they are given their RSS?
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
Okay. They are getting about £178 more per month than they would have otherwise, so that is all good. How does that impact the £1.7 billion estimate for what this is all going to cost? Are we clearer on that estimate, or has it gone up or down?
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
That sounds like quite a process to me.
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
Some of that data may not even be computerised—it may be on paper records.
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Mar 2026
McCloud Remedy
On the NHS, your letter of 11 March says:“At Committee I noted we were targeting 40% RSS completion by the end of March. As at 3 March, we had completed 26%”,which sounds a bit short.
John Mason Ind Committee
17 Feb 2026
Subordinate Legislation
The convener has touched on several issues already.The McCloud adjustment is £34 million. We have discussed that with you before. Could you clarify what that £34 million is?
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Committee

Finance and Public Administration Committee 02 December 2025

02 Dec 2025 · S6 · Finance and Public Administration Committee
Item of business
McCloud Remedy
Mason, John Ind Glasgow Shettleston Watch on SPTV

I will build on some of the things that the convener has already asked about. I did not quite understand the split or the fact that some are an immediate choice—the retired people—and some are deferred choice. I think that the figures that we had previously were 2,800 out of 65,000 immediate choice had been resolved, and 56,000 out of 150,000 deferred choice had been resolved. However, we are told that the figure is now 110,000 has been resolved. How is that 110,000 split up between deferred and immediate choice?

In the same item of business

The Convener (Kenneth Gibson) SNP
Good morning and welcome to the 33rd meeting in 2025 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We have apologies from Craig Hoy, who is unable to a...
Dr Stephen Pathirana (Scottish Public Pensions Agency)
Thank you, convener. It is really good to be here today. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss our work on remedy and the discrimination that was cau...
The Convener SNP
Thank you for that opening statement. Although it was helpful, it has generated a number of questions. For example, we wrote to you earlier this year, and th...
Dr Pathirana
There is a lot in that, so it might be better if I break it up into bits to answer. It is fair to say that we have uncovered a lot of complexity as we have g...
The Convener SNP
Are you saying that a lot of the police are five to 10-minute cases, whereas others are taking eight hours?
Dr Pathirana
Within every scheme, there is a mixture of simple, more complex and very complex cases. We were able to make progress on the police cases more quickly than t...
The Convener SNP
Okay. I find it remarkable that no one seemed to realise how complex it was going to be until May of this year. If processing takes five minutes for some and...
Dr Pathirana
They have all been done for police and we are working through the remaining 15 per cent of police cases.
The Convener SNP
What I am saying is, given the huge number of people involved, are you trying to at least get the easy ones off your desk?
Dr Pathirana
We are. We have made more progress with the police than we have for the other schemes and, as I said, the schemes are not uniform. There are other complexiti...
The Convener SNP
That tells me that it will still take at least until 2027 to get through that cohort. How many staff do you have working on this? You originally said that yo...
Dr Pathirana
We have had to ratchet up the number of staff. From 2023, we have been putting resources in place. We have brought in roughly 100 people in addition over tha...
The Convener SNP
How many did you have originally?
Dr Pathirana
We had 300.
The Convener SNP
You have increased from 300 staff members to 400, but you have gone from 12,000 cases a year to this monumental number. Your staff are clearly having to be c...
Dr Pathirana
There are two parts to that, and I will ask Frances Graham to share details of some of the work that we are doing around automation, which allows us to do so...
Frances Graham (Scottish Public Pensions Agency)
As Stephen Pathirana said, as we started to approach the remedy process, it was clear that we had a number of cases that we needed to process and that the ti...
The Convener SNP
As colleagues are keen to come in, I will not continue to hog the questioning, but I just want to tell you what someone wrote to me. This is someone from Fif...
Dr Pathirana
Police, fire and teachers should all be completed in the coming year, but we expect some of the NHS cases to run into 2027. As we go through the process, an...
The Convener SNP
I think that there have been enough false dawns. Given what has been said about automation, new recruiters et cetera, how many cases overall are currently be...
Dr Pathirana
How many cases?
The Convener SNP
Yes, in a week.
Dr Pathirana
Frances, can I ask you to take that question?
Frances Graham
It is difficult to put a figure on the number of cases processed in a week. We have a number of cases that we need to work through, and they fall into differ...
The Convener SNP
Indeed, but it is all about what goes out the door at the end of the day. It is not about saying, “Some cases take five minutes, and others take hours.” If t...
Dr Pathirana
I am just trying to think about how we could break that down. Obviously we are talking about lots and lots of different things across different schemes.
The Convener SNP
I know that, but you must be able to assess individually what has happened this week, this month or whatever.
Dr Pathirana
We do track things—what I am not able to give you is an overall figure. For example, when we are ready to process a certain batch, we can do so very quickly....
The Convener SNP
Yes, but if you know that you are going to be 40 per cent of the way through by that time, and you know how many people are in the cohort, surely you know ho...
Dr Pathirana
We are using automation, and the process is not even. We will prepare and test the automation and check that all the systems are working, and then the actual...