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Equitable Life

That is why I agree with many right hon. and hon. Members—especially my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase—that the decision on how we should respond must be a matter for this House. The hon. Member for Reigate also made that point. I fully accept that there are huge implications for the Treasury and for taxpayers’ money, but we have seen far greater sums of money being used in the past 12 months to rescue our banking system—rightly, in my opinion. Surely, Equitable Life investors who have lost out as a result of regulatory failure deserve the justice not only that the courts have said they should receive but that the ultimate court in the land, this House, thinks they should have. I urge the Government to allow sufficient Government time for a full, proper debate on this matter, with a free vote, so that we can make our views as Members known to our constituents and give our constituents the justice that they deserve. If investing a large proportion of earnings results in that money either disappearing or being greatly reduced in value, the resulting lack of trust in the system will lead to increased poverty in old age. It will also remove any incentive to make personal provision from a lifetime’s earnings. In the end, the state will have to foot the bill, thus increasing the cost to us all through taxation. It has been said that this is a scandal that affected only the well-off, and that ordinary people with relatively small savings were not involved. Let me remind hon. Members and the Government that EMAG told the Public Administration Committee that""the majority of Equitable Life’s policyholders had modest sized pensions and were not ‘fat cats’ who ‘risked their money to get above average returns’. In particular, the average investment of the half million individual policyholders amounted to £45,000 each, which in today’s money would buy a pension paying around £75 per week"."