Records of civil service pension payments ‘unacceptable’ admit officials

Inadequate records of civil service pension payments are “unacceptable”, the government has said after a spending watchdog raised concerns.

The National Audit Office qualified the accounts of the Principal Civil Service
Pension Scheme after Whitehall was unable to provide certain information…Auditors refused to fully sign off the 2011 civil superannuation accounts, which detail the financial results of the main civil service pension scheme…The National Audit Office said the evidence it needed to calculate whether all members of the scheme and their beneficiaries had received correct payments had not been provided…It also said “insufficient evidence” had been provided to reassure Auditor General Amyas Morse that the scheme £144bn liability – the estimated amount needed to cover members’ future payments – was reasonable…While record-keeping had improved “significantly”, it said 6% of payments analysed could not be corroborated by relevant documents and action was needed to “identify gaps in historic records”.

Read more: BBC, February 1, 2013