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Presbyterian Mutual Society

It is always a pleasure and an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Nicholas, but today is touched with sadness. This is the last occasion on which you will preside, with your keen interest and intense sympathy, over our deliberations on matters affecting people in Northern Ireland. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Antrim—[Interruption.] That was a map-reading error. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr. McCrea) on securing this timely debate on a hugely important matter. The hon. Gentleman said that people do not want blame games in relation to this matter, and the Presbyterian mutual society savers I have talked with—both constituents and others—do not want claim games either. People are concerned that there is some partisan tripping going on in relation to things that emphasise the role of Ministers of particular parties in certain ways. I remind him and other right hon. and hon. Members that when the crisis happened, the Minister rightly and alertly moved to legislate. That was supported by all parties and by the Committee for Enterprise, Trade and Investment in the Assembly, which I happened to chair at the time. The Committee took a keen and active interest and engaged with officials and the administrator in ways that did not cut across what the Minister and her colleagues were doing and did not distract in any way or compromise the role of Ministers in their engagements with the Treasury and others. That must be remembered as an important matter of context. Reference was made to the Treasury Committee report published last month, which was a welcome intervention in the matter. I hope that we Northern Ireland Members will not waste time today, in front of the Economic Secretary, disagreeing with and quibbling about aspects of that report. The report tried to inject urgency into the situation and show a real and keen sympathy. It was particularly helpful in cutting through the fog of obfuscation coming from the Treasury and others in London on the status and circumstances of the PMS savers. In particular, the report effectively refuted the nonsense that the savers should be treated as investors rather than bona fide savers and as shareholders with regard to the equity, as though commercial and tradable shares had been involved; they were simply withdrawable shares that the savers thought were the form of their savings engagement, on a mutual basis. That is what they always understood them to be, no matter how others have sought to characterise them. The Treasury Committee had to look at the background of what had happened, with regard to the performance and conduct of the society and the regulatory environment in which it all took place.Were there issues and lessons there? One reason why the Treasury Committee had to look into the background was that it has done exactly that in respect of every other banking or financial institution failure. If we are going to say that the Treasury and others should not treat the PMS any differently from any of the other institutions that have collapsed or got into difficulty, we cannot ask the Treasury Committee to treat the PMS and its circumstances any differently from how it has treated any other institution. For other institutions, it has drawn attention to mistakes, misjudgments and misdeeds on the part of the institutions. It has also drawn attention to some of the regulatory failures, assumptions, oversights and gaps—the kind of twilight zones that have given rise to the difficulties that were caused, which people are still locked into. It was right and proper that the Treasury Committee should do that. I regret the fact that people in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment were perhaps a bit oversensitive to some of the observations. Indeed, I could have taken issue with aspects of the Treasury Committee's report, which rightly and understandably questioned why no one in the Assembly knew that this problem was about to come up. Why did the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Committee, which I chaired, not realise or anticipate that there might be a problem? I could say, "That is misplaced. It is undue criticism, and an unfair question to ask of us. How could we know, in the circumstances?", but the issue here is not civil servants, Northern Ireland politicians or Ministers of whatever party in Northern Ireland. The issue is the need and plight of the PMS savers, and we have to roll with the punches when questions are asked about the political and regulatory systems. The hon. Member for South Antrim rightly highlighted the circumstances of PMS savers, and when we consider logic, circumstances and emotions, we can see that two statements made this morning—in response to the announcement of 12p in the pound being given to people who had more than £20,000 committed to the PMS—are true: one, there is at last some welcome comfort for some savers; and, two, it is too little, too late. We need to ensure that things move forward from here. The ministerial working group was established last year on the back of an intervention during Northern Ireland Question Time by the Chair of the Treasury Committee, who called on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to convene a meeting of Treasury Ministers, devolved Ministers and Northern Ireland Office Ministers. That initiative then became the ministerial working group. Savers are waiting for outcomes and results. They feel that what they have had from all of us who are involved in this has been a lot of finger-pointing and hand-wringing. They want answers—not insults to their intelligence and motives, or mischaracterisations of them as speculative investors. I have constituents who are members of the PMS; some of them had their life savings or life-start funds for their families committed to the society. Not all of them are actually Presbyterian, even though it is a condition of membership. One constituent is a woman who received significant but hard-won compensation for serious brain injuries resulting from a road traffic accident. Her solicitor, who helped her for many years in that fight, said, "I know a good place for that money." So, as well as £20,000 in withdrawable shares, more than £900,000 awarded by the court to look after her for life was committed to the PMS in trust through the solicitor. She is in a dire situation, as are many others. She has cause to resent the insinuations made by some people that those who have more than £20,000 invested are fat cats who do not really deserve sympathy as smaller savers with less than £20,000 do. She does deserve sympathy. I have another constituent who has significant money involved—well over £600,000—in a charitable trust in his family's name. The trust does good work in my constituency and the constituencies of other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Campbell), and in Africa. There are many good causes and worthy circumstances that need to be borne in mind and considered, and the Treasury needs to show more sympathy and urgency in that regard. We need from the Treasury a firm indication that it gets what is wrong. It is no good its pretending that we can afford to allow the PMS savers to linger in their plight because they are not systemically significant. It is no good its saying, "There are serious questions for the PMS itself; some of what it was doing was illegal." If some of what it was doing was illegal, it was not down only to the DETI in Northern Ireland to spot that. The illegalities were in the areas of interest and oversight that were the business of the Financial Services Authority. What was that institution doing during that period about sectors in which it should have had an interest? As the hon. Member for South Antrim said, we need to look at everyone else who has faced difficulties because of pressures on their institutions. It needs to be borne in mind that in those cases there were institutional mistakes and misjudgments, and regulatory oversights and failures, but in none of them did the savers themselves end up having to pay the price or carry the can. PMS savers in Northern Ireland are uniquely put in that position, and the indifference that has been shown by the Treasury borders on injustice.