Equitable Life

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Tom Randall

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con) [V]]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing it, and on his co-chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group for justice for Equitable Life policyholders, which I have been happy to join. He very eloquently set out the background to this matter in his opening speech, and I associate myself entirely with his comments. As he said, this situation has its origins in unique circumstances, and as the parliamentary ombudsman found in 2008, the victims’ losses have been directly attributable to a decade of serious and serial regulatory maladministration.

These matters have been well covered so far, but I would like to make three brief points. The Equitable Members Action Group has raised doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the Treasury’s methodology, and how it has been used to calculate the compensation payments made. I hope that can be addressed in the interests of open government, so that concerns in that area can be resolved. I also note the action group’s call for a joint inquiry on payment accuracy by the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I am a member of the latter Committee, and I note that call. I am sympathetic to it, so that this can be looked into further.

This is a very technical matter, but I think we should look at the human side of it as well. A recent Prime Minister said:

“The British people are decent, sensible, reasonable and they just want a government that supports the vulnerable, backs those who do the right thing and helps them get on in life.”

That really sums up some of the Equitable Life victims I have met in Gedling. I have met only a small handful of the 2,300 victims and their dependants in my constituency, but they come across as quiet, unassuming people who do not want to cause a fuss, and tried to do the right thing, work hard, and make the right preparations for their retirement. It is time that we tried to address their valid concerns. Equitable Life had a series of adverts in the early 1990s that traded on the solidity of its investments. A 1993 commercial finished with the slogan, “You profit from our principles”. That appears not to have occurred, and I hope this is something that we can finally begin to address.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I would like to try to give everybody on the list a chance to speak. Therefore, with apologies to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for giving him no notice whatsoever, I now have to impose a time limit of three minutes.