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Equitable Life

It is, and my hon. Friend might want to intervene again. However, the Bradley judgment and last week’s court judgment confirmed the legal basis of the Government’s ex gratia proposal, and that brings us to the point that there is no legal obligation on the Government to provide compensation for regulatory failure. The ombudsman appeared before my hon. Friend’s Committee, and it may have been him who asked her directly whether she would have been content for the Government to accept all the recommendations and then provide no compensation whatever. I think that it was question 29 of the relevant report, and her answer was yes: she would have been, perhaps not satisfied, but content that it would have been perfectly legitimate for the Government to provide no compensation whatever. However, even though there is no legal obligation to provide compensation, all parts of the House agree that there is a legal and moral demand for the provision of some compensation. The question then becomes, what is the rational basis on which to put in place that scheme?