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Equitable Life

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) on securing the debate and giving us another opportunity to try to persuade the Government to do the right thing by Equitable Life policyholders. The title that the ombudsman gave to her report—"Equitable Life: a decade of regulatory failure"—sums the situation up very well. When Equitable Life was forced to default on its obligations to policyholders in 2000, it is estimated that more than 1 million policyholders lost part of their savings. Therefore, we all have victims in our constituencies. I share the hon. Gentleman's outrage at the fact that the situation is still unresolved nine years later. In the nine years since 2000, about 30,000 policyholders have died. As we heard earlier, the Library estimates that another 15 people die each day. It is important to remember that the victims of the collapse are elderly people who now face hard times. They did what successive Governments recommended they do, by making provision for their retirement. They made sacrifices earlier in their lives to make provision for their old age. These are the victims that we are talking about.