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Equitable Life

I beg to move,"That this House notes that the Ombudsman published her report on Equitable Life in July 2008, that the Government did not make its response until January 2009, and that its rejection of some of her findings was successfully challenged in the High Court; believes that the delays caused by the Government since the publication of the Ombudsman's report have led to further and unnecessary hardship for Equitable Life's policyholders and have done further damage to the UK's savings culture; and calls on the Government to set a clear timetable for implementing the Ombudsman's recommendations and remedying the injustice suffered by policyholders." It is hard to believe that nine years after Equitable Life's policyholders saw the value of their policies slashed, six years after Lord Penrose identified regulatory failures, 18 months after the ombudsman's damning report on the regulation of Equitable Life and more than a year since the Government's response, policyholders are still no nearer to knowing what the outcome of their fight for justice will be. They have been given no timetable for payments and no certainty as to how much they will receive. That is the tragedy of Equitable Life for its policyholders, many of whom will not live to see justice done. The truth is that it did not need to be this way. The Government deliberately chose, at each turning point on the road to justice, to take the longer and more difficult route— there were no short cuts for the Government, because the delays suited them—and from the outset they sought to block the campaign. The pattern of the Government's behaviour is clear. They wanted to block, frustrate and then delay the fight for justice. They could have chosen a better, quicker route to justice, but they dogmatically chose a different path: one that has delayed justice. Who has paid the price for that? The answer is Equitable's policyholders, the people who have faced an uncertain future, the people who are struggling to make ends meet because their pension is not as much as they expected, not because of the market, but because of actions taken by the management of Equitable that were not picked up by regulators over the course of a decade. Every Member in this House will know from their postbag the personal cost of this to their constituents, but whatever the outcome for policyholders we know that more than 30,000 will not see justice. We also know that as every day goes by, more and more policyholders see the prospect of justice disappear.