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Equitable Life

I apologise if the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the point I was trying to make. I am very pleased that the Government are committed to giving a response within two weeks, but my point is that we do not yet know when the payments will begin—indeed, we will not know that until they begin—or when they will be completed. I recently met Chris Wiscarson, the new chief executive of Equitable Life, and I know that other Members have also met him. I thank him for his engagement with Parliament and hon. Members in order to ensure that, as leader of Equitable Life, he is focused on the policyholders and on trying to reduce his overheads and what he calls the bottom line—the expenses involved in running the organisation—to the absolute minimum, so that the maximum amount is available for policyholders. I commend him for that. Turning to the Chadwick process, Sir John will give his final advice to the Government in May. He is looking into the details of 2 million policies, so he has to get this right. As we are dealing with about 2 million policies, the data must be clean. The Government said they will respond to Chadwick within two weeks of receiving his report, but a literal interpretation of the ombudsman's findings would mean excluding at the very least trapped annuitants, which—