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Equitable Life

I have to disagree with the hon. Lady; she is starting in the wrong place. She asks how much we can afford and says that afterwards we should tweak the scheme to meet the bill. We are talking about an injustice that needs to be righted. She knows that figures of up to £4 billion have been talked about. That is one estimate. However, we do not have access to data on scheme members—how much they have lost and the different categories—so it is difficult to know how much the bill would be. The starting point must be to remedy the injustice. Of course, we will have to put a bill on that, but to start by asking what we can afford is not the way to remedy the injustice. My final concern about the John Chadwick process is the following fundamental issue: is it about hardship, charity and discretion, or about righting injustice? Surely it must be the latter, which is why the ombudsman process was involved. Was there maladministration leading to injustice? The ombudsman said yes. The Government said, ““Well, probably not.”” However, they excluded most of the ombudsman's expensive findings. The Government say that they agree with five in 10 of the findings, but those are the cheap five. The position is so constrained that it is not acceptable.