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Equitable Life

I do not think that the hon. Lady was present to hear the Chief Secretary’s opening remarks. She may have been, but she certainly missed large portions of the debate. He coined an unintentionally laughable word that reminded me slightly of when Hillary Clinton said that she "misspoke" when she was caught out saying something fundamentally untrue, or of when Janet Jackson suffered a "wardrobe malfunction". It was an expression of that type. He said that he had under-celebrated the role of the ombudsman. That is one way of putting it. Let me tell the House what the ombudsman said about the Chief Secretary. She stated on 20 August, only two months ago, in a letter to the Chief Secretary:""I noted what you said in the House on 21 July and did not recognise it as a true representation of my position. That said this is not the first time that the Government has misrepresented my position in order to defend its own and I suspect it will not be the last."" I can see why the Chief Secretary is likely to under-celebrate her role, but it is part of a wider pattern. In her initial report, the ombudsman said that the Department of Trade and Industry oversight had been""passive, reactive and complacent"," and that Financial Services Authority regulation had been""largely ineffective and often inappropriate"." The Select Committee, which has been referred to on a number of occasions, described the Government’s excuses as""shabby, constitutionally dubious and procedurally improper"." There has been a track record going back months—indeed, years—of the Government dragging their feet and behaving dishonourably. Even last year the Prime Minister promised that the next stage of the process would be completed by the end of 2008. That is the report to which we keep referring, which came in the middle of January 2009. One should be extremely cautious about accepting the timetables put forward by Ministers. The fact that the Chief Secretary stood before the House today and implied that policyholders should express gratitude for the swiftness of the Government’s response compared with the other potential solutions on offer stretches credibility to the very limit.