Sovereign Grant Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I shall deal with that point in a minute.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if those costs are indeed taken into account the reduction between 1991-92 and the present day becomes even greater? The figures do not include, for instance, the royal yacht, which has been decommissioned and is no longer a burden on the Ministry of Defence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Yes, but what I am talking about does not relate to security. I am talking about equerries and other people who play a vital role in running the royal household and who are important in Her Majesty’s representational role. In the previous debate people tried to conflate the two issues, but I am talking about ceremonial duties that are being paid for from the defence budget.

[Dr Murrison]

Until recently the hon. Gentleman was a Defence Minister, and a very good one, so I wonder, since he feels so passionately about this, what efforts he made to identify those costs.

[Mr Jones]

I also chaired the value for money group in the Ministry of Defence, and those costs were on the radar screen for the work it was carrying out. There is a sense of grievance in the MOD and the armed forces that this money comes out of the defence budget. There should be some recognition of this vital work, but it should not come out of the defence budget. That would also avoid the nonsense that we saw last week in The Mail on Sunday, which claimed that the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family stopped using the royal flight because the cost was being charged to the royal household. I understand that after representations were made to the Treasury the cost was reduced by £6,000 an hour for the use of one of the royal flights. Therefore, a basic subsidy is going to the royal household from the defence budget, which I do not think is right. If the full cost of the royal flight is £13,000 an hour, the Government should pay for that to support members of the royal family who need to travel on official duties. I have no problem with that, but I have a problem with where it comes from and how it is accounted for.

Independent Financial Advisers (Regulation)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr McCann]

I agree entirely, and I shall address that point a little later. It is why my constituents and I were so angered by the comparison of the current level 3 minimum qualification to that of a McDonald’s shift worker. It is, indeed, an insult to the many of thousands of people who work for that company—a company whose products, looking around the Chamber this evening, I am sure a few people have sampled.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the QCF—qualifications and credit framework—level 4 qualification, but is he not concerned also about the impact of the measure on the need for continuing professional development outlined in the RDR, and the fact that it is likely to disadvantage small operators who will not be able to rely on the critical mass of a large organisation when taking time off—probably about a week every year—to conduct CPD?

[Mr McCann]

I agree entirely. The measure will impact on small businesses, not the big part of the sector, and that is why the Financial Secretary should have been mindful of the commitments people have to make to gain qualifications in the sector. One IFA, in particular, heard the Minister’s comments and blogged:

“I’ve just spent 70 hours revision to pass RO1. Nobody has paid me for my lost time. Nobody has asked me 1 of the 100 questions in the exam for the last 22 years. This guy”—

the Financial Secretary—

“needs to get in the real world.”

That leads me to my main contention: the proposals and timetable to increase the qualifications needed to participate in this sector of the economy are not sensible. Exams and qualifications in the sector are not new, but the proposal to introduce new rules that effectively force people to re-sit exams without taking account of their experience or, most importantly, clean regulatory record is patently unfair. Moreover, the sector will not be able to absorb the cost of revalidation; instead, as other contributors have said, it will be passed on to the customer in the shape of higher fees.

Others have also mentioned that many professional groups in the United Kingdom are not asked to revalidate, so I seriously wonder why we are trying to isolate this particular sector. Why, as other hon. Members have asked, do we want to take away that valuable experience from that important part of the economy?

Our time is limited, and there is a limit of six minutes on each contribution, but I too want to mention one individual who has contacted me in the lead-up to the debate. He is an old friend of mine, a next-door neighbour, and it is important that we bring our experiences to the House when we discuss such issues. Jim Hunter sells financial products, and he contacted me, but he did not complain about the need for transparency, fairness or greater clarity. In fact, having done business with Jim, I know that he had all those ingredients many years ago. Indeed, I am sure that many people who have contacted hon. Members are in exactly the same boat.

Jim was talking to a colleague recently at a meeting. The gentleman is 60 years old, with more than 30 years’ experience in the industry, and if he sat the proposed exams he would be 63 before he finished them. Jim explained that that person would be lost to the industry and have to retire before his time, because he would not study at that time of his life. There are many people like that, trying to make a living for themselves in difficult times, and that ability to earn a living in this important part of our economy will effectively be taken away from them without any real benefit to the economy itself.

Financial Assistance (Ireland)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the few redeeming features of the Labour party when in government was that it failed to take us into the eurozone? Does he understand, as I do, that the Labour party’s policy remains that we should work towards the eurozone? As the Leader of the Opposition is changing his policies, what advice can he offer?

[Mr Osborne]

Let me speak for Government policy. We will not join the euro. I believe that the Opposition’s official policy is to join the euro, but perhaps that will be discussed by their policy groups over the next two years.

Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I support the Bill because it will enable Equitable Life policyholders to start getting paid. Those people put their savings into what was Britain’s oldest and, as far as they were concerned, most reputable savings institution. They were not like the people who put their savings into outfits offering dubious and extraordinary returns, such as those who decided to chance their savings with the Icelandic banks. The Equitable policyholders are in their current position through absolutely no fault of their own.

So who was at fault? First, clearly, the people who were running Equitable Life were at fault. I do not think that anyone is going to dispute that. Secondly, the House of Lords was at fault in its judgment in the case of the guaranteed annuity rate beneficiaries. When it reached its decision, it knew what the consequences were likely to be for Equitable Life and other policyholders who would not benefit from that judgment. Rather ironically, the House of Lords showed no sense of what was equitable and not a grain of common sense. It decided that it would award justice to one small group of people, almost automatically resulting in injustice for a much larger group. In view of the dubiety of certain organisations with which people put their savings, we need to look at the law to see whether we can enable the courts to come to what might be described as an adjudication rather than a judgment, where a judgment in favour of one group of innocent people might be very damaging to another group of innocent people. The Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and others were clearly at fault. Nobody can deny that, but at the time that the first ombudsman’s report came out, I believed she was wrong as well. In my judgment, her judgment did not give enough weight to the primary shortcomings and primary fault of Equitable Life, and attributed too much fault to the regulators.

Clearly, the Government were at fault in their response to that report. It was understandable that they did not fancy the establishment of the principle that people could seek compensation from a regulator. That is not an unsound concern on the part of a Government, who might not want to be subjected to all sorts of court actions—for example, when somebody decides that the police have failed to prevent burglaries in their area and seeks to bring a case against them. The financial services industry is keen always to blame regulators, as it has done in a big way.

Things changed at the time of the credit crunch. All questions about protecting the taxpayer fell away. All the old restraints fell away. The banking and savings industry, run by people of infinite greed and stupidity, was so hopeless that it was decided on both sides of the House that not only the people who had put their savings in them, but the institutions themselves, were entitled to be bailed out. From that moment on, I was convinced that had the Equitable Life issue arisen in 2007, 2008 or 2009, there would have been no doubt: we would all have agreed that the people who had lost their money should be properly compensated, and by the taxpayer. That is what we now have to do if we are to give people a sense of security in their pensions and savings.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No, I do not want to. We must get on.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats attacked the Labour Government—as far as I was concerned, quite rightly—and said in opposition that they strongly supported the ombudsman’s recommendations. I do not recall my opponents at the last election getting up and saying, “Well, there were a few caveats in the ombudsman’s report,” and I doubt whether that crossed Tory or Lib Dem lips anywhere else in the country.

Before, during and after the general election, the two parties that now form the Government thrice promised that the ombudsman’s report would be implemented, and they had better get on with it. However, their form of getting on with it is to establish yet another commission. That may work swiftly; I do not know. I have a question which I hope the Minister will answer. If the commission comes up with a scheme that EMAG does not like, will he send it back to the commission and insist that it comes up with a scheme acceptable to EMAG? I am happy to give way to him if he would like to contribute to the debate.

Once everyone has been paid, the situation is still not sorted out. We need to look closely at better regulation of those who are taking in people’s savings. We need to look at the regulatory system to see whether that can be strengthened in various ways. Finally, as I suggested, we need to change the law so that in circumstances like those that originally arose in Equitable Life, the courts can adjudicate between two innocent parties, not help one lot and hammer the other.