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Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

No, I will not. Like other Members, I want the Government to have their moral hat on. Forgetting about the failings of the past, this is their opportunity to do right by those who have lost out, and their action should be moral, not party political. Ministers can stand up to Treasury officials and do what is right. We have heard a lot today about the £5 billion price tag, but let us be clear that it is not £5 billion this year or next. As Members on both sides of the House have said, it could be spread over several years, or possibly decades. It does us as parliamentarians no good to throw telephone number-like figures around to frighten people into believing that we cannot do anything. We need to help the trapped annuitants who are locked into their losses. I wish to address a point that Members from all parties have made. Many of the people affected are not rich. They span all walks of life, and they were doing the right thing by investing for their future. We need a commitment to help those people now, and we need costs to be allocated so that we understand the annual cost over, say, 10 years. However, we also need to be aware that about a third of the 1.5 million people affected had invested all their future in Equitable. Some of those people have lost their homes and cars, and with them their dignity, and we should take the opportunity to restore that dignity. As I have said, my constituents feel that despite their hopes, nothing has changed with the change in Government.