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Equitable Life

I want to record my interest as a former Equitable Life policyholder in relation to my pension as a special adviser. The Chief Secretary is treating all the policyholders with the most enormous contempt if he says that he will not put the responsibility on to them to assess the compensation for claims that they may put in. To say that he is going to set up a system that will assess 2 million possible investment decisions in order to come forward with proposals puts the thing precisely the wrong way round. The one way to get policyholders in a position to make claims is to reverse the burden and put the burden on policyholders to come forward with their claims against a set of criteria that the Government and this House set.