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Equitable Life

The ombudsman herself acknowledged that it was legitimate for us to take up the wider interests of the taxpayer and the issue of the public purse. Constitutional matters were raised. The constitutional balance that the legislation reached, on the one hand, permits the parliamentary ombudsman wide jurisdiction and powers of determination, as well as the ability to make far-reaching recommendations, but, on the other, permits a Government to reject findings and recommendations in certain circumstances. We did not depart lightly from the ombudsman’s findings. After careful consideration of her report, we accepted some, but, where we believed that we had cogent reasons, we departed from others. The recent High Court ruling upheld a number of those departures, and others have gone unchallenged. The Court found that the Government did not have cogent reasons for some departures, and we have accepted those findings and amended Sir John Chadwick’s terms of reference to include them. Sir John is confident that that additional scope will not impact on the time scale for resolving his work. At no time have we sought to delay matters. The ombudsman’s report was the product of four years’ work, and it raised a number of complex and difficult issues. None of the Government’s actions has been motivated by anything other than the desire to achieve a fair resolution for policyholders and taxpayers alike. We continue to believe that this was, and is, the right approach. Some Members, including the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), suggested that the Court struck down our ex gratia scheme. That is not the case. It endorsed the Government’s right to depart from the ombudsman’s finding 3 and strongly rejected the challenge to the Government’s decision to depart from her recommendation. That is not indicative of any lack of respect for the office of ombudsman or any disregard for the plight of policyholders affected by the events at Equitable Life.