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Equitable Life

Let me come directly to that point. I do not think that we can estimate when the first payments will begin to arrive, or when the process will be completed, until we have Sir John's final report in May. I say that for a simple reason. Until we are able to estimate, and hear from Sir John about, the total bill and what the right kind of compensation looks like, it will be difficult for us to know or guess—and it would be wrong for us to attempt it—whether the right kind of compensation is cash or a different kind of financial services product. Equally, until we know who Sir John thinks it is appropriate to include in the final design of the scheme, we will not know whether the scheme that we are running will be paying out to hundreds of thousands of people or to millions. The answers to these two questions have important consequences for how delivery arrangements should be set up. A smaller scheme could probably be delivered quite quickly—through the Department for Work and Pensions, for example. A more complicated scheme that involved, for example, distributing financial services products to Equitable Life policyholders, could require the Government to secure a delivery partner in another financial services company. That is why the answer to my hon. Friend's question is difficult.