14:51 - divided: - Ayes: 76 / Noes: 301 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Hamilton
That is a good point, and it was made during the previous Parliament, in February, at a packed meeting with the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, and Sir John Chadwick. My right hon. Friend made a commitment, which I am not sure the Financial Secretary has made, so perhaps he will clarify the situation in his contribution, that the estates of those who had passed away would receive some compensation. The point that I have just made may be contradicted, but it depends on what the Financial Secretary and the Treasury want to do.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
Before the hon. Gentleman continues, let me just make it clear that long ago we established the fact that, under any compensation scheme designed, we would make payments to relatives of those who were deceased, and that there would be no means-testing.
Mr Hamilton
I thank the Financial Secretary for clarifying that point, which somewhat contradicts what I said earlier about the diminishing amount of money.
The best estimate that EMAG can give us is £200 million for the 10,000 existing pre-1992 annuitants. I confirm that I wish to press my amendment to a vote, and simply conclude that we owe some of our most frail and vulnerable pensioners no less. I urge all Members to support my amendment.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. The issues are complex, and the more one reads about and understands the scandal, the more difficult it becomes to resolve it. The Government in their wisdom have set out a compensation scheme that will continue for many years. The £1.5 billion is not a one-off payment that will go into a fund this year and end the matter. It will be spread over many years, and it will extend into the next Parliament.
Bob Blackman
I thank the Minister for his intervention. I was going to refer to that while I was responding to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry). The clear issue now is justice for the people in the worst possible position—the trapped annuitants. I applaud the Government for honouring the pledge that 37,000 people who have been trapped as a result of the scandal will receive 100% compensation. I strongly support and endorse that.
We have a problem, however, and amendment 1 attempts to address it. The amendment has cross-party support; we must be seen to be acting not just as a party but as parliamentarians overseeing the Executive. The problem is that if someone took out a policy on a particular day, they would receive no compensation at all, even though the maladministration was taking place at the time; whereas someone who took out a policy on the following day would get 100% compensation. There are always difficulties when arbitrary dates are set, but that is neither fair nor reasonable.
I believe that we should set aside the date and review all the trapped annuitants to ensure that they get fair and proper compensation. The Chadwick report has been rubbished by EMAG, and by Members on both sides of the House, but even Chadwick proposed a scheme that would have compensated those trapped annuitants whose policies were taken out before the cut-off date.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
I would like to speak mainly about the position of with-profits annuitants and the pledge that I and other Members of all parties made before the general election—that the Government should make fair and transparent payments to those who had suffered as a consequence of the debacle of Equitable Life. I am talking about 350 local people in my constituency who are part of the Equitable Members Action Group. Those 350 include people associated with many companies that were in the Equitable Life scheme. Many hundreds of other people are affected. For some, Equitable Life provided their only private pension to supplement their state pension provision.
I welcome the fact that for a number of my constituents, that pledge has been made good, and I understand that the trapped annuitants in the post-1992 cohort will receive 100% of their compensation. I am delighted about that. Needless to say, I am also very concerned for the pre-1992 Equitable Life investors for whom, it seems, there will be no compensation at all. That seems contrary to the recommendations of the parliamentary ombudsman, contrary to EMAG’s suggestions and contrary to the views of Sir John Chadwick, for whom not many Members have a great deal of time.
I understand that it is difficult to quantify the losses, but, if the Government have the will, the losses of the pre-1992 annuitants should be explored. The people to whom we made a pledge before the general election in May were not necessarily concerned whether they were pre-1992 annuitants or post-1992 annuitants. Their concern was as Equitable Life policyholders looking for justice.
If the Government and the Treasury have the will to deal with this situation, they should do so; if not, they should explain how I justify the position to constituents who have been wronged.
If the Government and the Treasury are prepared to look at compensating the pre-1992 annuitants, there has to be a health warning, because there is a law of unintended consequences, should we be stuck at the compensation figure of £1.5 billion. Many of my constituents who are post-1992 annuitants might be unaffected by any decision to include the pre-1992 annuitants.
Amendment 7 deals with that position and the relative losses. The Treasury should consider it, although I am concerned about whether it could be taken into account within the current comprehensive spending review or would need to be considered after the current CSR period expires.
I would like to ask the Minister several questions. First, will he look again at how to compensate the pre-1992 annuitants, and at how that might be quantified? Will he commit to working with his Treasury colleagues to take into account payments beyond the CSR period to enable the pre-1992 annuitants to be compensated without prejudicing the position of the post-1992 annuitants and that of Equitable Life policyholders generally?
I implore the Minister again—I did so in the last debate on this subject—to recognise that the Government’s decision over Equitable Life raises questions not only about the integrity of the current Government, but about the integrity of savings and investments for one’s retirement. I am well aware that many of my constituents do not have their own retirement provision. The Government should encourage people to provide for their retirement, but if we do not ensure that there is a safety net for people who have invested and done the right thing for their retirement, they will think that it is not worth putting themselves out by investing money for their retirements during their early years of work.
I ask the Minister to consider those points extremely carefully before any decisions are taken this afternoon.
Mr Hoban
I start by referring to the closing question from my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). He will be aware that in July we published proposals to strengthen the regulation of retail financial services, including pensions, which I hope will go some way towards reassuring people that we have learned the lessons from the past and put in place a much more stable and robust framework for the regulation of long-term savings.
I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss, first, the role of the parliamentary ombudsman in developing our policy on the payment scheme. Her work has been central to our approach. I also want to focus on with-profits annuitants and those who took out their policies prior to September 1992. These issues have been raised particularly since our announcements in the spending review. I hope that I can bring some clarity to the treatment of different groups of with-profits annuitants.
Nadhim Zahawi
Is it not precisely the point that, rather than being an open-ended compensation scheme, the scheme relates to malpractice?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our obligation is to compensate people for regulatory failure by the Government when they were the regulator of Equitable Life. The scheme is not an open-ended compensation scheme. It is very focused, and that was the ombudsman’s recommendation. Her locus in this matter is a consequence of the Government having acted as the regulator for Equitable Life during the period in question.
Let me explain to the Committee and to the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Mr Hamilton), who raised the question, why 1 September 1992 is a logical, not arbitrary, date. The ombudsman indicated in her report that there were problems with the regulatory returns for 1991, and that those could influence policyholder behaviour. However, they could not have come to the attention of policyholders, and prospective policyholders, before they were submitted at the end of June 1992. No policyholder would have been aware of that regulatory failure until the returns had been published. It is unlikely that those returns would have come to anyone’s attention prior to 1 September 1992. I stress that the date is not arbitrary, but a consequence of the ombudsman’s findings and how they impact on what policyholders would have been aware of. Policyholders would not have been aware of the regulatory failure until the autumn of 1992.
Mr Fabian Hamilton
I accept the Minister’s point about the date not being arbitrary, but does he not accept that the regulatory failure affected those annuitants who could not change their annuities, even if they were purchased before September 1992? Along with those annuitants who purchased policies after September 1992, they continue to see a decline. Therefore, they were affected by regulatory failure.
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman makes an assumption that the scheme is open-ended, but it is designed to compensate policyholders who invested in Equitable Life from 1 September 1992. With regard to the implications of that, I shall respond to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans).
Mr Weir
Will the Minister explain further, as I do not quite understand? He seems to be saying that only those who became aware of a regulatory failure in 1992 are affected. However, am I not right in thinking that that suggests that the regulatory failure goes back prior to 1992, and would have affected people then, although they would not have been aware of it? Are those people not entitled to compensation?
Mr Hoban
The ombudsman is concerned about people who invested in Equitable Life who might not have done so had they been aware of that regulatory failure. That regulatory failure would not have been known to them until September 1992, so there is a clear, rational argument for 1 September 1992 being the right date to start the calculation of losses.
Bob Blackman
But will the Minister answer the moral issue? At the time when people were making investment decisions, and taking out these policies, the regulatory failure was going on. As they became victims of that regulatory failure, surely we have a moral duty to compensate them.
Mr Hoban
When people made the decision on the information available to them, the relevant information was not in the public domain, and would not have affected their investment decision until September 1992. That is a clear, logical, sensible starting point, based on principles and on the ombudsman’s findings, for the maladministration, and that is the point from which we should calculate relative loss for policyholders.
Mark Durkan
The Minister is in danger of asking the Committee to accept the notion that customer ignorance can be a legislator’s excuse. That cannot be so. If the Minister is trying to say that what they did not know did them no harm, that is preposterous. They did not know, and they have suffered harm.
Mr Hoban
I do not agree with that point. There is a clear principle: the basis on which people were investing in Equitable Life. At that point, no one knew about the maladministration.
We should also bear in mind the issue of practicality and the lack of information available to Equitable Life’s policyholders. Hon. Members should reflect on the fact that no one would have made investment decisions based on anything that happened prior to 1992 until that information was in the public domain. That is why the group has been excluded from the calculation of relative loss.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. No one suggests that the situation is not difficult, but whether or not one was aware of maladministration, and whether or not it existed pre ’92, surely the central point is that annuitants who took out a policy pre ’92 suffered relative loss post ’92, courtesy of maladministration. To return to an earlier point, perhaps there is a moral duty to include such people in the compensation, as I believe that the parliamentary ombudsman suggested.
Mr Hoban
The parliamentary ombudsman’s findings were clear: she said that the maladministration started in 1991, but that it would not have been obvious to policyholders until September 1992.
Let me deal with two issues that hon. Members should have take into account in assessing the point. First, as has been mentioned, there are challenges around getting information for the pre ’92 period. Secondly, there is the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North about the timing of losses. We recognise that pre ’92 with-profits annuitants were affected by how Equitable Life was run. Sir John Chadwick and Towers Watson looked into what those WPAs would have received from Equitable Life had there been no maladministration. They concluded that they received more from Equitable Life as a result of maladministration than they would have done had it been properly regulated. That was because Equitable Life paid out more to them in the early years than it would have done had there been no maladministration. Let me give an example to prove that.
If a with-profits annuitant had purchased their policy in 1989 and gained through that purchase an income of £7,200, by 1993 the policyholder would have been receiving an annuity of approximately £10,000 per annum. Part of that sum was a result of the bonuses that had been declared on the policy since commencement. It is recognised that Equitable Life was paying higher bonuses than it could afford during the late 1980s and early 1990s. If Equitable Life had not been over-bonusing during that period, Towers Watson has calculated that the policyholder would have received only £9,500 per year. It is a consequence of the maladministration that the policyholder is receiving £500 more than he or she should have during that period.
Equitable Life continued to overpay bonuses throughout most of the 1990s. As a result, by 2002 that policyholder was receiving £17,000 per annum. If the over-bonusing had not taken place, the policyholder would have received only £15,800, so he or she was still receiving more as a consequence of maladministration.
In 2003, Equitable Life cut the rate of annuity payments to its with-profits policyholders by about 20%. In the absence of maladministration, the value of payments to with-profits policyholders would also have been cut, although, owing to market performance, by only 18%. After the cuts in 2003, our example policyholder was receiving £12,900 per year from Equitable Life. Had there been no maladministration, he or she would have been receiving only £12,300. I hope that that example has helped to clarify the consequences of maladministration, namely that even after the cuts in 2003 policyholders are still receiving more than they would have if Equitable Life had been properly regulated. For a range of reasons, their plight is not as it has been represented.
The first question to be asked, then, is “When did maladministration affect policyholders and the decisions that were made?” The second relates to the practicality of extracting data pre-1992, which is well established and has been well aired in the Chadwick report and elsewhere; and the third concerns the consequence of maladministration in Equitable Life, which is that with-profits annuitants are receiving more over the lifetime of their policy than they would have received if that maladministration had not taken place.
Jonathan Evans
I was interested in the way in which my hon. Friend dealt with my point about over-bonusing, but I feel that he has undermined another point that I made: I suggested that it was not possible to make such calculations, but my hon. Friend has suggested that Towers Watson has done so. In a sense that also undermines the thrust of why the pre-1992 policyholders should be excluded. I had assumed that they might not have been disadvantaged and that it was too difficult to work out the numbers, but if Towers Watson has worked out those numbers and there is no relative loss, it seems a bit odd not to include them, at least for the purpose of calculating the position and telling them that there is no loss.
Mr Hoban
I was trying to make two points. First, those policyholders were excluded from the calculation of relative loss as a consequence of the ombudsman’s findings and her view on when maladministration had taken place. According to the example that I have given, they would not have suffered loss in any event. I am merely saying that, in my opinion, there is a strong case in principle for the exclusion of those policyholders, and in practical terms they have not suffered loss.
Mr Hoban
I want to make some more progress.
The fact that with-profits annuitants who bought their annuities before 1 September 1992 have seen a reduction in the level of payments that they currently receive from their annuities is a result of poor investment market performance and the fact that their earlier annuity payments were artificially high. That was because of the structure of the policies that they bought, or because they received too much in the earlier years, as Equitable Life paid out more on a discretionary basis than it should have. Unlike the value of conventional annuities, the value of a with-profits annuity varies according to investment return. Although the reductions are regrettable, they are not instances of Government maladministration, and therefore Government should not be providing compensation for that group of policyholders.
Chris Leslie
I beg to move amendment 3, page 1, line 7, at end insert—
‘(2B) The design and administration of any scheme of payments to which this section applies shall be independent of government.’.
Mark Durkan
If the right hon. Gentleman had been here for the debates on earlier amendments, he would know that I made no such excuses then. Indeed, in all previous debates, I have been very critical of the performance of previous Governments. We have both been the Finance Minister in Northern Ireland, as he says. When I held that position, I used the line, “I’m the Minister of Finance; I don’t suffer from depression but I am a carrier.” That is the effect: Treasury Ministers are put in that sort of position. They become aware of constraints and difficulties that they then have to put before everyone else and impose on them as well.
My point is not that Ministers were right or wrong to listen to the advice but that we, as a Committee, must choose whether to go along with the Bill and say that the scheme will proceed only according to Treasury lights or whether to say instead that it should go according to wider lights and be informed by the sort of considerations reflected in the various amendments that hon. Members have tabled and by the many good observations made by Members on both sides of the Committee. Either we want to trust the Treasury and leave the scheme entirely in its hands, with its considerations and constraints alone, or we want to honour the spirit of what we have all pledged to those who have lost out with Equitable Life and to act in the light of the sad experiences that we have heard about.
I commend the amendments to the Committee. I shall wait to hear what the Government say about their amendment, but it seems to reinforce the Treasury’s whip hand over the whole scheme.
Mr Hoban
I take the same view as the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) on the responsibility of Ministers. Civil servants provide advice but Ministers decide and act and we cannot ignore that responsibility. We have taken this matter very seriously and have sought, over the past six months, to drive through a speedy resolution to the problem. I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on tackling this matter.
On the amendments before us, the purpose of amendment 3 is to make the design and operational mechanism of the scheme “independent of government”. I understand the need for independence in the design of the payment scheme, which is why I established the Independent Commission on Equitable Life Payments. The commission’s advice will necessarily form the basis of the scheme’s design. It will advise on how best fairly to allocate payments among policyholders, with the exception of with-profits annuitants, and it will consider which groups, if any, should be prioritised. It is right that that process should be independent, so the scheme will be independently designed.
The Government have considered whether the scheme should also be operated independently of the Government, as amendment 3 proposes, and have concluded that that would not be appropriate for three key reasons. First, it would delay the commencement of payments. Our ambition is to start making payments in the middle of next year using our preferred delivery partner National Savings and Investment. I shall say more about that on amendment 6. If amendment 3 were accepted, NS&I, which is an Executive agency of the Treasury, could not be used as the delivery partner as it would not be operating independently of the Treasury, which would therefore have to establish a new, independent body or identify an existing such body that could operate the scheme. It is also likely that legislation would be required to task the independent body with the design and operation of the scheme, which would delay significantly the making of payments to policyholders.
Secondly, the Government have established an independent commission to advise on the allocation of payments. This function is independent of the Government and is key in determining a fair allocation of payments. Making the operational delivery provider, whose job is largely about sending out the payments and making sure that cheques get to the people who are entitled to receive them, independent of the Treasury would not add significant value to that task.
Finally, it is important to ensure that value for money is considered when deciding on a delivery partner. The Treasury has satisfied itself that NS&I has the capacity and the capability to deliver the scheme, while at the same time providing value for money. The Government consider that by establishing the Independent Commission on Equitable Life Payments on 22 July, we achieved the aim that is at the heart of the amendment.
I turn to amendment 4 and what policyholders should do if they consider that they are not being treated fairly under the scheme. The Government are committed to treating policyholders fairly. In line with that, there will certainly be a means by which policyholders can raise concerns about the incorrect application of scheme rules to individual cases. We have given much thought to how best to deal with complaints and have made a great deal of progress in putting together a process that is fair and thorough. Full details of this process will be included in the document that sets out the scheme design in full.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
I spoke about this last time we discussed the matter. Given that the message to savers from the previous Government was non-existent or at least negative, does my hon. Friend think the message that the present Government are sending to savers is adequate? Are we saying clearly, “We understand that you have been badly let down by Government and we want to put things right as much as we can, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves”?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes an important point. There are two aspects to it. First, in respect of Equitable Life, the speed with which we have acted demonstrates our commitment to a resolution of the problem. The second is a forward-looking and prospective issue, which is why we have brought forward proposals to improve the regulation of retail financial services through the establishment of the new Consumer Protection and Markets Authority. That will be a boost to regulation and give confidence to savers that the market will be better regulated. It is important, and we have introduced measures recently, to ensure that if anything goes wrong, there is a proper process in place to tackle that.
I was commenting on the scheme appeals mechanism, which will be published before the scheme begins making payments and will be made available for parliamentary scrutiny. If a policyholder believes that the rules of the scheme have been incorrectly applied to their data, they will be able to raise a query with the delivery body, stating the nature of their concern. The query will be pursued by the delivery body.
If there is merit in the challenge and it is upheld, a recalculation will take place. If the challenge is not agreed by the delivery body, the policyholder will have the option of taking their case to the review panel. The review panel will consider the case in full and be able to make a fresh decision based on the facts of the case. It will be independent of the original decision-making process. If a complainant’s case is upheld, the review panel will ensure that a recalculation is carried out. If the complainant remains unhappy with the review panel’s decision, they will be able to challenge that decision in court by way of judicial review.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
My hon. Friend referred to cases in which the rules of the scheme might not have been correctly applied, but such are the complexities of Equitable Life policyholders—for example, a constituent of mine whose policies were additional voluntary contributions in a pension scheme which has been wound up—that someone might wish to argue that their particular type of case had not been envisaged in the way the rules were formulated, and that a specific decision needed to be made in that case. Will the scheme be wide enough to make that possible?
Mr Hoban
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I would expect the payments commission to design a payments scheme that would be sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that all groups of policyholders were covered by it, so any appeal would be on the basis only of any data used to calculate the losses, rather than an appeal in principle against the design of the scheme. I will bear in mind the point that my right hon. Friend makes and encourage the commission, when it takes representations from people, to think as widely as possible about the different groups of policyholders that need to be taken into account.
Chris Leslie
The Minister is being extremely helpful and at least setting out a sense of what the architecture of that appeals system will be. He said that it would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Can he say for the record that the relevant statutory instrument will be subject to the affirmative procedure?
Mr Hoban
There is no requirement in the Bill to lay the scheme as a statutory instrument, but I shall ensure that when the scheme design is produced, it is laid before the House and there is an opportunity to scrutinise it.
The hon. Gentleman asked a question about the cost of administration and the cost of the appeals mechanism, and he was right to recollect that I said previously that the cost of administration would be separate from the compensation pot. That is still the case, and it goes without saying that the cost of the appeals mechanism will also be separate from the compensation pot. We want the money that is set aside for compensation to be used for compensation.
Bob Blackman
I am grateful to the Minister for outlining the appeals process, which, in this complex and complicated arrangement, will be important. Will he elucidate further on the effect of the time frame of the appeals process? What would happen if, for example, an individual policyholder or set of policyholders, who felt that they had been wronged and not received the compensation that they were due, went through the process and that led to a breach of the cap? If they were suddenly compensated with a lot more money than had already been allocated, how would that be dealt with?
Mr Hoban
In that situation, there would be two aspects: first, the design that the payment scheme had applied; and secondly, the data that were available to the policyholder. The scheme will be designed in such a way that it does not breach the cap, so it would be possible to appeal only if the data were incorrect. The data that will be used to calculate the compensation will come from a database supplied by Equitable Life, and I hope that its data are of a high standard, so that those situations do not occur.
From the details given today, the Government have been considering very carefully the design of the appeals procedure, and we will publish details of the procedure, along with other aspects of the scheme, ahead of the time that amendment 4 proposes. So in light of that we believe that the amendment is not necessary.
Let me turn to amendment 6, which is in my name. The delivery of the Equitable Life payments scheme is an important matter, and since we took office we have made huge strides towards finding a resolution to the Equitable Life issue. However, we are aware that, for many policyholders, the issue will continue until they finally receive the money. As such, it is important that we find the right delivery partner to help us do that. Having given the matter careful consideration and looked at a range of options, our preferred option is to use NS&I, to deliver the scheme.
Officials have held many meetings with NS&I to find out not only whether it is capable of carrying out that important task, but the processes by which delivery could be carried out. There are many factors that make NS&I an appropriate delivery partner for the scheme. One of the most obvious and important is capability. As part of its everyday functions, NS&I makes millions of payments to customers every month. It has processes and infrastructure in place and experience of carrying out the functions that the scheme will require.
The need for value for money in the delivery of the scheme is also important. We are all aware that, in a climate where we have had to make difficult decisions about where to make cuts, the Government must look for ways of making the cost of delivering the scheme reasonable. Using NS&I will allow us to draw upon existing Government relationships and contracts, and I am satisfied that NS&I can provide a good delivery mechanism by which we can start making payments in line with our stated ambition of the middle of next year.
Chris Leslie
I am grateful to the Minister for the information about National Savings & Investment being the preferred vehicle. In theory, there is a separation between policy, in terms of the scheme design, and operations, in terms of the administration but blurred edges can sometimes appear between the two. Will the independent commission hold the ring in any disputes about the mechanism, timing and administration of the scheme? Who will be the final arbiter of any disputes that arise from the process? Presumably, it will be the independent commission.
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and it is vital that we are able to operationalise, as it were, the scheme design. That is why I have encouraged the payments commission to engage with NS&I to ensure that the scheme that the commission designs can be delivered. That is an important part of the process, and I expect the commission to do that during the course of its work. I think that addresses the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Let me turn finally to new clause 1 and the status of the independent commission. I have already spoken about the importance of the work of the commission, and I am not sure that the new clause, which would give it statutory footing, would add value to its work.
Mark Durkan
Returning to amendment 6, can the Minister assure us that it is there only to provide proper statutory cover to the director of savings and NS&I in relation to the scheme, and not to extend Treasury control or constraints in relation to it?
Mr Hoban
I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. We could not use NS&I if we did not include this power in the Bill. Its purpose is to enable NS&I to act as a delivery partner, not to give the Treasury some way of reaching back into the payments scheme. I reassure him, and others, that the power is there merely to deliver the outcome of the scheme.
The role of the payments commission will be key. It will advise on the distribution of payments to those other than WPAs, and I will take its advice extremely seriously. The new clause would introduce a requirement for the commission to consult key bodies in the development of its advice, but let me tell my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) that it would need no statutory encouragement to do so. The commission has already met Equitable Life and EMAG, and it has published a discussion paper asking for more views on the guiding principles for determining fairness in allocating and prioritising the funding. I do not believe that an amendment to the Bill would make it any more consultative and thorough in its task. My hon. Friend is aware that I have made the commitment to go along to the all-party group with the chairman of the commission to engage with parliamentarians on this matter. That is a very clear sign of the way in which we want to engage, or the commission wants to engage, with stakeholders to come up with the best design for the scheme. I encourage people to read and engage with the commission’s discussion paper, too.
The new clause would also introduce a statutory duty for the Government to lay the design of the scheme before Parliament in the form of a statutory instrument in order to allow full scrutiny. I entirely understand the thinking behind this, and transparency has been at the heart of our approach to developing the payments scheme. However, as I have said, I will publish and lay before Parliament a document setting out the scheme design in detail, which may then be debated as Parliament chooses. Again, I do not think that a statutory requirement will make my commitment to full transparency any stronger. The Government therefore resist the new clause.
Furthermore, including provision in the Bill as to the status and operation of the independent commission would pose a very serious risk to the timetable of the commission. The commission is already in operation and has been since July, and it is due to report at the end of January. Notwithstanding the speed with which the House is dealing with the Bill, it will still take several weeks for it to finish its passage through this House and the other place. If the commission had to be reformed after the Bill received Royal Assent, to restart its deliberations so as to comply with the provisions of the new clause, there would be a real risk of delay to its advice. This would, in turn, delay the making of payments to policyholders—something that I am sure none of us would want to happen. In the light of this, and given the comfort that I hope I have provided on the operation of the commission, I invite the hon. Member to withdraw his amendment.
Chris Leslie
I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the information about the preferred vehicle for the payment scheme. Although we would have preferred to see some of the issues regarding the design of the scheme independently set out and enshrined in the Bill for the avoidance of doubt, I accept his commitment in making these points on the record. Similarly, in respect of the appeals mechanism, this debate has given us the opportunity to shed a little light on to how he envisages that arrangement playing out.
I hope that the Minister’s commitment to allowing further parliamentary scrutiny will not involve merely tabling a negative resolution on the Order Paper so that Members have to beg the indulgence of those on the Treasury Bench to find time to debate it. Given the amount of interest in these matters across the House, the affirmative procedure would be preferable, as that would allow us to consider them in detail. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr Hoban
Let me deal with amendments 5 and 8. We have stated that our ambition is to commence payments in the middle of next year. As the Committee is aware, we have made great progress on this issue. Within six months of coming to office, we have published Sir John’s report and the supporting material; we have provided the first bottom-up estimate of losses suffered by policyholders; we have set aside £1.5 billion for the payment schemes; we have announced that we will cover the full losses of eligible with-profits annuitants; and we have established the Independent Commission on Equitable Life Payments to advise us on the fair allocation of payments among policyholders. Such progress shows how seriously we take this matter and how quickly we want to find a resolution. Our ambition is to commence payments in the middle of next year, and our track record of getting things done quickly on Equitable Life shows that we are capable of doing so.
Let me set out the process that we are following to ensure that payments are made as quickly as possible. In line with our commitment to independence, we have set up the independent commission to advise us on how we can fairly allocate the funds among policyholders, with the exception of the with-profits annuitants and their estates, and on any priority groups or classes of person who should be paid earlier.
Such an approach will help to inform the sequencing of payments. To ensure that the payments can begin as soon as practicable, we have set a challenging timetable for the commission and it will report at the end of January 2011. Between the end of January and the dates that payments commence, we will be laying the advice of the independent commission over the operational technicalities of the scheme to ensure that the end-to-end process operates well. We will then publish a scheme design document that sets out the end-to-end process of the scheme in the spring. We will also finalise the arrangements with the delivery agent. That will help to ensure that when the scheme goes live, we can get payments to policyholders efficiently.
I hope that I have reassured hon. Members that this Government are committed to making payments to policyholders as soon as it is practicable and that we are taking all possible steps to achieve that. As a result, amendment 5 is unnecessary. I have addressed the points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) about the sequencing of payments. We are seeking advice from the new payments commission on how that sequencing will take place and how it will fit within the envelope of public spending that is set out in the comprehensive spending review.
Let me turn to amendment 8, standing in the name of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), to which my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) spoke. The amendment deals with the issue of how payments should be made. I recognise the fact that policyholders have waited far too long for a resolution to the matter. That is why at the spending review we set out how we envisage the scheme working. I want to set out that vision again. Those policyholders who do not have a with-profits annuitants policy will receive their payments in one lump sum to give them the closure that they need quickly. As it happens, amendment 8, tabled by the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend, would mean that with-profits annuitants would not receive their payments in the way that we envisage. One of the reasons why we have been able to increase the amount available to policyholders is so that we can spread the amounts going to with-profits annuitants over the remainder of their lives. If my hon. Friend’s amendment were accepted, it would stop that process and mean that their payments would come out of the £1 billion set aside at the time of the CSR. I therefore suggest that the amendment would not help policyholders to receive quite as much money as we believe they should.
Owing to logistical constraints associated with such a large and complex scheme and to affordability constraints, we cannot make all lump sum payments immediately. They will be paid out over the first three years of the spending review period. That is why I have asked the commission on payments to advise me on whether there are any classes of policyholders whose payments should be prioritised, to ensure that those in most urgent need of redress are paid first.
Chris Leslie
This may be a naive question, but box 2.7 in the spending review says:
“The Government expects the total amount of funding for the scheme to be in the region of £1.5 billion.”
That is the envelope that we have been debating, and that figure matters quite a lot, especially for those other policyholders. However, the same box says that
“£1 billion will be allocated to the Payments Scheme in this Spending Review period, which will cover…the initial costs of the first three years of WPA”—
with-profits annuitants—
“regular payments, and all payments to other policyholders.”
Can the Minister explain the difference between the £1 billion and the £1.5 billion, and say how the timings will be affected? Presumably the other £500 million will arrive after the spending review period, but I am a bit confused on that point.
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which gives me the opportunity to clarify the make-up of the £1.5 billion. The figure includes the full cost of the losses to with-profits annuitants—approximately £620 million—which will be made through regular payments. However, taking into account the pressures on the public purse, the Treasury could allocate only £1 billion over the first three years of the spending review. That will cover two things: the first three years of payments to with-profits annuitants, and lump-sum payments to all other policyholders and to the estates of deceased with-profits annuitants.
It is important to start to pay off with-profits annuitants’ losses quickly, alongside the lump-sum payments to other policyholders. About £225 million of the £1 billion is for with-profits annuitants and their estates, leaving approximately £775 million for lump-sum payments to non-with-profits annuitants. The Towers Watson estimate of £620 million for with-profits annuity losses leaves approximately £395 million for the rest of the WPA losses from 2014-15 onwards. Those who are quicker at mental arithmetic than me will have worked out that the total comes to about £1.4 billion. The balance is a contingency, because the payments to with-profits annuitants are based on their longevity. We hope that they live long and healthy lives, and that buffer is set aside to cover this need. That is how the maths works out.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Could my hon. Friend provide further clarification on the tax status of those receiving such payments?
The Second Deputy Chairman
Order. There has been a very expansive debate so far, so there will not be a clause stand part debate. If the Minister wants to say anything, I would encourage him to say it now.
Mr Hoban
You are right, Ms Primarolo, we have had an extensive debate, so I will ensure that I now have my notes to hand for the clause stand part debate. I should clarify the treatment of the payments under the tax and benefits system. They will not be treated as income for tax purposes, and will not be taken into account in the calculation of tax credits, which is a benefit for policyholders. In terms of benefits, they will be treated as capital rather than income, and given the beneficial nature of the treatment of capital in the benefits system, that helps policyholders. We have sought in the design of the scheme, through measures such as the tax and benefits treatment, to maximise the value so that policyholders will receive the full amount.
Nadhim Zahawi
I will test the Financial Secretary’s arithmetic a little further. Has he worked out what that advantage is over and above the £1.5 billion?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It is difficult to calculate that because, as he will recognise, the tax status of Equitable Life policyholders varies. Some pay no tax, some pay tax at the 20p rate, some pay tax at the 40p rate, and some may even pay tax at the 50p rate. The value will depend on their tax status, and we do not have sufficient access to taxpayers’ records to be able to match Equitable Life policyholders with their tax records, so we cannot calculate the benefit. However, he will appreciate that it could provide a significant benefit to some policyholders, and I hope that they will recognise that when they receive their payments. We have sought to be as generous as possible in the tax and benefits treatment for that purpose.
Mr Redwood
I thank the Minister for an important improvement to the scheme, which I am sure is welcomed.
Mr Hoban
I thank my right hon. Friend. When designing the scheme, we considered seriously how to ensure that policyholders would benefit as much as possible from the payments. If we had been less generous, we would have been accused of clawing back money through the back door, and that is an impression that we want to dispel.
Sir Alan Beith
I welcome that announcement, but there is a group of people who are affected in multiple ways: those who have funds in Equitable Life that are not yet in payment and who have been given transfer values substantially below what they believe the fund to be worth, even now. If they are waiting up to three years, and take the money out, accepting the transfer penalty, will they invalidate their entitlement under the scheme?
Mr Hoban
That is an important point. I am sure that a range of issues will emerge as we move through the scheme’s design to payment. People who have had Equitable Life policies throughout the period and bought them post-September 1992 will receive compensation even if they have exited from Equitable Life’s current arrangements. I hope that that provides clarification.
Jonathan Evans
Will my hon. Friend take the opportunity, perhaps later, to issue a fuller statement on his very important announcement in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood)? I intended to raise the matter on Third Reading. There is no doubt that many policyholders will be delighted to hear the news, and it should be made more widely available to all policyholders so that they are aware of it.
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is right. The old saying is that the best way of keeping a secret is to make a speech in the House of Commons. I am sure that those of my hon. Friends who are in contact with Equitable Life policyholders will take the opportunity to write to them, and I hope that the Equitable Members Action Group, which is the main lobbying organisation on behalf of policyholders, will also take the opportunity to pass the information on to its members. It is important information for them, and we will continue to make policyholders aware of it as we communicate further details of the scheme.
Before that series of interventions, I was reflecting on amendment 8, and I want to say a little about why we are treating the with-profits annuitants differently from others in regard to payments. We need to recognise that the nature of the policies of that particular group of people is very different from that of other Equitable Life policyholders. Their losses relate not just to what has happened in the past, but to what will happen in the future. They will continue to receive a stream of income over a number of years from their with-profits annuity policy. We are now able to match that stream of income with their historic losses and their future losses. It makes sense for them to receive their payments in a way that reflects the income stream that they have lost, which is why they will receive their losses in regular payments over their lifetime.
In the light of that, I hope that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras will decide not to press amendment 8 to a vote, because the approach that he suggests is not appropriate for with-profits annuitants. We are determined to make swift progress on making payments to other policyholders, however, and they will get lump sum payments that will be free of tax.
Mr Hoban
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Government want to see justice for Equitable Life’s policyholders, and this is clearly reflected in the actions that we have taken since coming to office. In six short months, the coalition Government have made real progress towards implementing their pledge to make
“fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policyholders…for their relative loss as a result of regulatory failure.”—[Official Report, 26 May 2010; Vol. 554, c. 1WS.]
Since coming to power, we have published the first ever estimates of losses suffered by policyholders, considered representations on them, and endorsed a relative loss figure of £4.3 billion—in line with the parliamentary ombudsman’s findings. We have set aside £1.5 billion to make payments, which is more than four times the amount that Sir John Chadwick’s methodology produced. This strikes the right balance between fairness to policyholders and fairness to the taxpayer.
We have announced that we will cover the full losses of those policyholders who have or have had with-profits annuities. We have established an independent commission to assess how best to allocate payments to policyholders. While giving the commission wide discretion, we have made it clear that we do not expect payments to policyholders to be means-tested and that we expect payments to be made to the estates of deceased policyholders. Our goal is to make the first payments to policyholders towards the middle of next year. This is a huge achievement, of which we can be rightly proud.
The Bill is a vital part of this work. It gives the Treasury the authority to incur expenditure to make payments to policyholders. Without this Bill, redress for those who have suffered so long would be impossible. That is why we have moved so quickly. To delay further action would be unfair to those who have already waited over a decade for a resolution. The sooner the legislation is in place, the sooner we can bring their suffering to an end. I know that right hon. and hon. Members of all parties fully support us on that.
We announced as part of the spending review that it was our intention to make these payments tax free. Today’s Bill gives the Treasury the power to make an order allowing these payments to be disregarded for tax. The payments will also be disregarded for the purposes of tax credits.
Finally, the Bill enables the Government to consider what effect, if any, these payments will have on people’s eligibility for certain means-tested, state-funded support. I outlined in the debate on the final group of amendments how this treatment will apply to welfare benefits. We are still considering how the payments will affect support such as social care.
We have concluded that lump-sum payments made as part of this scheme will be disregarded as income for the purposes of assessing eligibility for means-tested benefits. Instead, they will be classed as capital. Capital limits do not immediately cut off eligibility for benefits; they work on a sliding scale, gradually reducing support for individuals with larger assets. It is unlikely that many recipients who would otherwise have been eligible for means-tested benefits will receive payments that dramatically affect this eligibility. For with-profits annuitants, regular payments will be treated as income in a similar way to the lost income stream that these payments represent.
Earlier today, hon. Members debated in detail a Government amendment that gives National Savings & Investments the power to deliver payments. That being a large and potentially complex task, it is essential that the delivery partner has the experience and expertise to do the job properly and cost-effectively. When judged against these criteria and the imperative for payments to begin as soon as possible, National Savings & Investments was the strongest candidate, which was the motivation for including this amendment in the Bill.
I am aware of the concerns that hon. Members have voiced about the Bill’s brevity. It is, indeed, a two-clause Bill and it does not include detail about the payments scheme that would allow Parliament to scrutinise and debate the issue. I would like to point out that there is no requirement for the Bill to do so; it is simply an enabling Bill to give the Treasury the power to make these payments to policyholders—and nothing more. The scheme design does not require statutory footing and, of course, before the scheme design is finalised, we first need to make progress on this Bill. If we had waited for the scheme design to be finalised before proceeding with the Bill, it would have taken far longer before we could start to make payments. What the Treasury has sought to do is to work on as many streams as possible in parallel, within the constraints of our legal powers.
Let me reassure all hon. Members that I am fully committed to transparency at every stage of this process. I understand and sympathise with Members’ concerns, and for this reason I will publish a document setting out the scheme design in detail and lay it before Parliament for full scrutiny. Following the independent commission’s publication of its final advice, I will make a statement setting out the Government’s response.
I also know that Members are keen to discover whether a robust appeals process will be in place, one that will allow policyholders who believe their payment has been wrongly calculated to challenge this judgment. I am therefore pleased to confirm that we will be appointing a review panel, independent of NS&I, with full powers to consider any such challenges and to overturn any decision that it finds incorrect. As I said to the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) in an earlier debate, the costs of that appeal mechanism will not be borne by the compensation pot. We want to ensure that policyholders get the full value of the money that we set aside for compensation payments.
In the interests of transparency, I should like to set out the next steps in the process of resolving this long and complex issue. As a starting point, I hope that today’s Bill will receive Royal Assent by the end of the year. That will allow the delivery partner to start preparations early in the new year, and to be well placed to make the first payments by the middle of the year, as is our ambition. It is important for the delivery partner to start work early, in order to accelerate the timetable to make those payments. The independent commission is due to report to me in late January and, following that, we will incorporate its recommendations in the design of the scheme, which will then be scrutinised by Parliament.
As I said earlier, I would encourage hon. Members on both sides of the House, whether they are new to the issue or have run with it for many years, as so many of us have, to engage with the commission in its work. It is independent of the Treasury, and the three commissioners are very experienced. I believe that they have the expertise and skills to design a proper payments scheme for policyholders. However, they would welcome contributions from everybody who has participated in the debate, not just in the House but across the country over the past decade, to enable them to produce the best possible scheme design, which meets as far as possible the aspirations of people who have had policies with Equitable Life.
Since the Government took office in May, we have come a long way. We have achieved far more in recent months than was achieved in recent years. We have quantified relative loss suffered because of maladministration. We have identified the losses that policyholders have suffered on a bottom-up basis, by groups of policies and by age. For the first time, a proper understanding has been established of the losses suffered. That is a tribute to the hard work conducted by Towers Watson and others to develop that estimate. As a consequence of the spending review, we have been able to assess the quantum of losses, to decide the loss figure that we accept. We have accepted the ombudsman’s view that relative loss is the best guide. We set aside £1.5 billion of funding to cover the cost of the payments scheme. We have announced that the losses of post 1992 with-profits annuitants will be covered entirely by the Government. We have also established an independent commission to advise on the allocation of funding to not-with-profits annuitants policyholders.
As a Government, we want to see a swift resolution to this matter. We want the many policyholders who have waited in financial purgatory for so many years, and who have campaigned so hard for justice, to receive the payments that are rightfully theirs. No one could disagree that policyholders have waited too long for justice. Although the debate has been relatively brief, it is not just the tip of the iceberg—to which the hon. Member for Nottingham East referred—as anyone who has participated in the debate will recognise. Passing this important Bill is essential to achieving justice, and I commend it to the House.
Chris Leslie
The short debate that we have had has covered a set of specific issues, largely arising from the Government’s conclusions in the spending review about how to compensate those suffering injustice following maladministration by insurance and financial regulators in the case of Equitable Life. I am glad that we have had the opportunity to talk about the independence of the payment scheme. We have been able to hold the Government’s feet to the fire on whether it will match the ombudsman’s model. I am glad that the Minister said that he would welcome further comments from her on the design of the compensation scheme. It will be interesting to see whether she endorses it as being the fair and transparent scheme that many Members have pledged to deliver.
We have also discussed the appeals procedure and the timing of payments. In response to the second ombudsman’s report, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), offered an apology for the past failings of the regulators. That is an important point, which is separate from the question of whether the regulators can be held fully or only partly responsible for the losses incurred by the maverick actions of Equitable Life’s management during the 1980s and early 1990s. I am sorry that, at least during this debate, Ministers have not also expressed regret, clearly and on the record, for the part that their party played during the 1980s in failing adequately to establish a regulatory system to prevent the vast bulk of the Equitable Life problems from arising in the first place. I know that it was a long time ago and that none of the current Ministers were in any way responsible, but I think it would have been a helpful gesture to draw a line under the failings that had occurred in the past. After all, Lord Penrose concluded in his inquiry report that Ministers in the late 1980s
“did not regard the subject”
of updating life insurance regulation
“as a high priority for legislation.”
He noted that
“the Government's objective was to deregulate, to reduce regulatory burdens on business, to avoid interference in private companies, and to let market forces prevail.”
Mr Hoban
I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is new to this topic, but we have already clearly expressed our apologies. Unlike the last Government, we immediately accepted all the ombudsman’s findings of failure. The hon. Gentleman’s party did not even have the courage to do that.
Chris Leslie
I am glad that the Minister has been able to reiterate points that he did not make in his Third Reading speech. I do not necessarily want to reopen the box entirely, but it is important for both parties to recognise that mistakes have been made, and that things should and could have been done better by those on both sides. In particular, however, I think it is important not to gain the impression that failings did not occur on the watch of the Minister’s party. Lord Penrose found that Conservative Ministers
“argued against reform in the… 1990s”,
and that the United Kingdom “led the resistance” to Europe-wide attempts to update the third life directive. Those who argue that Labour alone fell short in respect of reacting to the Equitable Life debacle should realise that the ideological approach pursued by the Conservatives was absolutely central to causing the mess in the first place.
As Members know, the last Government would have chosen a different route to compensation. We were anxious that a poorly designed compensation scheme might entail a person-by-person review aimed at disentangling individual losses one by one, examining more than 30 million investment decisions by 1.5 million people over 20 years. That would have been a mammoth administrative task. Moreover, the ombudsman had implied that individuals would need to prove that they had relied on the regulatory returns and had been misled as a result. The last Government did not believe that such an approach could be feasible.
It was for those reasons that Sir John Chadwick was asked to explore a more realistic and reliable payment scheme methodology. He concluded that the Treasury should deal with the issue by grouping cases into about 20 broad categories of policyholders who were in similar circumstances. The payment scheme would then deduce the relative loss in each category in comparison with the outcomes of a basket of other policies that had not suffered from the same regulatory failings. The Government have clearly embarked on a different course, although they have taken up some of Chadwick’s pragmatic suggestions about the automaticity of compensation. We genuinely hope that that will work.
We are pleased that this short paving Bill is before the House, because we feel strongly that the matter should be resolved. The Committee stage gave us an opportunity to question the Government on several aspects of their approach, and I am glad that we have had an opportunity to draw them out further today.
Let me end by simply raising a question mark over the words of Ministers before May, when the general election took place, in comparison with their actions today. Many hundreds of thousands of Equitable Life policyholders—possibly as many as 1 million—were led to believe that in signing the EMAG pledge, Ministers were supporting a particular outcome that may not now arrive. Most Conservative Members signed that pledge. They pledged to their constituents that
“if I am elected to Parliament at the next general election, I will support and vote for proper compensation for victims of the Equitable Life scandal and I will support and vote to set up a swift, simple, transparent and fair payment scheme—independent of government—as recommended by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.”
As the payment decisions are made in the next few years and the cheques finally start to arrive, EMAG members and policyholders who are not in line to receive 100% compensation for their full relative losses will have to draw their own conclusions as to whether the Government have fulfilled their promises. So far the signs are that many policyholders do not feel that those Members who signed the pledge are keeping their word. They feel that the scheme will fall short of proper compensation and a fair payment scheme.
Chris Leslie
We will not know that, because Chadwick’s report was published after the general election. We had a series of steps that would have then been taken, but history went in a different direction because the spending review and the Budget were undertaken by a different party, not by our party in government. I am not saying that there are magic solutions to this issue. These are complex matters and there are technical reasons for both the methodologies that are being used in the compensation and the timings and the discussions around them. It is important to bear in mind the wider needs of the public purse. We have consistently said that and now the Government have come round to that point of view. I understand why they did.
Mr Hoban
The previous Government took six months to dither over what they would do about the ombudsman’s report, whereas we accepted her recommendations straight away—there had been maladministration, there should be compensation for relative loss, and affordability was a key part of her recommendations. We accepted that quickly, whereas his right hon. and hon. Friends sat on their hands.
Chris Leslie
I disagree with that. The hon. Gentleman certainly did not say before the general election that this would be £1.5 billion—[Interruption.] Oh, did he? Where did he say before the general election that this would be £1.5 billion? I shall give way to him if he can give a reference for that. Answer came there none—proof in point that after the general election a different set of expectations was set out by the Government than those that might have been an interpretation of the Minister’s words before the election.