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Finance: Equitable Life

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, again evidences her accomplished grasp of these complex issues. I shall not be tempted to comment on the Hyman judgment or preferential treatment between one set of policyholders and another. However, I absolutely endorse the correctness of her observation that the Parliamentary Ombudsman was limited to a review of the performance of public bodies and therefore could not have done the further stage of work which Sir John Chadwick will now do; namely, to seek to allocate proportionately the contribution of various bodies to any loss suffered, which is quite right and proper. Anything short of that would be an extraordinary abuse of the public purse, which is acknowledged by many, including the Member of Parliament for Tatton in another place.