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Equitable Life

I would love to be able to comment on Sir John Chadwick in greater detail, but I have not had the opportunity to meet him. I suppose that was the point being made by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham. Sir John should meet Members of Parliament. We were elected to represent our constituents and that would aid the process. I have no reason to doubt that he is an honourable person. In the last few minutes available to me, let me deal with the way forward. The Minister said that we should be looking at a timetable of spring 2010. Some people will be worried that that is an elastic date. He was notably evasive when it came to offering a specific date when people could expect to see some payments made, not just further progress made. Even if that were spring 2010, hon. Members should remember that at current rates another 3,000 or so Equitable Life policyholders will have died between now and then. A policy process that does not recognise the acute needs of the individuals concerned will cause a huge amount of distress. There was no talk about interim payments. There was considerable concern about the expression "disproportionate loss" used the Government. We need to make it clear that that is not some form of means-tested benefit, but recognition of the actual losses experienced by real policyholders. Everybody accepts that there was fault on the part of the people who ran Equitable Life. Of course market forces have an impact on the value of policies, but the ombudsman’s report was concerned with the regulatory failure. The Government need to accept the ombudsman’s report, give a straight response about a reasonable outcome and, most of all, reassure people across the country that speed is of the essence, that the Government understand their immediate human concerns, and that they will respond to those as a priority.