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Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Like many of us, my hon. Friend is wrestling with this question of fairness and with the political obligation to find a fair payment scheme that was mentioned in the Public Administration Committee and that many of us have signed up to. Hon. Members from both sides of the Committee are caught between wanting to praise the Minister for the swiftness of his recommendations—and we praise him for that—and finding, in these difficult times, £1.5 billion. We often talk about that figure in comparison with the Chadwick number. However, does my hon. Friend not accept that we should view the figure with respect to what the Government themselves have said about policyholders' relative loss, which Towers Watson estimated at, I think, £4.3 billion? Does £1.5 billion represent meeting our obligation of fairness if it is set against the relative figure of £4.3 billion that the Government themselves have accepted?