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Equitable Life

We accept the ombudsman’s recommendation that payments should be made to policyholders who lost out. She was right to make her points about relative loss and the impact of compensation payments on the public purse, and I do not believe that anybody in the House disagrees about how that is to work. However, we need to consider the matter of the tribunal. Strong arguments have been made about how it should work and why there needs to be independent review, but I am conscious that policyholders have waited a long time for justice, because the Government have sought to frustrate and block the process. It is all very well for the Chief Secretary to be reasonable now, but some of his predecessors have been less than reasonable. I want to see justice given to policyholders speedily and fairly. They have waited long enough, and we should implement the scheme as quickly and fairly as possible. We have been clear in our support for the ombudsman’s recommendations. That is our position today and would be our position if elected at the next general election. We have also accepted the ombudsman’s finding that there was a decade of regulatory failure. The Chief Secretary talked about cleaning up the mess that had been left, but he should acknowledge that some of the regulatory failures that the ombudsman identified happened on the current Government’s watch. If he has cleaned up anybody’s mess, it is the mess that has arisen as a consequence of the delays in dealing with the problem. We agree with the ombudsman that policyholders should receive payments for relative loss and that the impact on public finances should be taken into account. We now need to understand how quickly the Government can move. Since January, when they accepted some of the ombudsman’s findings—they have now been forced by the courts to accept others—the Treasury has failed to set a timetable for the resolution of the problem. That failure, coupled with the Government’s tactics to date, create the strong impression that the Treasury wants to kick the matter into the long grass and put it off for another few months. That is not fair to policyholders who want some certainty about when they might see a payment. We have made some progress with the Government, and the Chief Secretary has announced that he expects Sir John to put forward a design for a payments scheme in spring 2010. What is less clear is when policyholders would receive their first payments under such a scheme. He said that the ombudsman’s proposals might not mean payment before December 2010, but do the Government believe that payments will be made before that point under their scheme? Policyholders need further clarity, and I am surprised that the Government have not produced an indicative timetable of what may happen once Sir John puts forward his scheme. Perhaps when the Exchequer Secretary winds up the debate, she will put some flesh on the bones of what the timetable beyond spring 2010 should be. The Public Administration Committee called for an indicative timetable in its report, and it is disappointing that the Government have failed to establish one.