Equitable Life

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am delighted to take part in the debate, so absolutely no apology is necessary.

Here we go again. I think I have lost count—as you no doubt have, Madam Deputy Speaker—of the number of these debates we have had over the years. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on obtaining the debate and on the work that he does with the all-party parliamentary group for justice for Equitable Life policyholders. I hope that if those on the Treasury Bench take away no other message today, they will take away this one: this case is simply not going to go away. The number of people who are affected will undoubtedly dwindle over the years, but this case will not go away until their claims are met and justice is given to them.

Others have made points about the handling of claims, and constituents who are in touch with me tell very much the same story.

There is just one point on which I would like the House to focus this afternoon, and that is the need for transparency from the Treasury on the compensation that it has paid out. The principle was accepted right at the start, as far back as 2010—I was Minister in that Government, throughout the five years of the coalition—that there would be compensation for the maladministration. The source of the anger—as I say, it will not go away—is the fact that getting on for 11 years later, we have not seen full compensation.

The importance of this case goes beyond those who lost out under Equitable Life, because such treatment of people in similar cases continues to this day. Over the last few years, I have been working with constituents and other people throughout north-east Scotland who have lost money as a result of the fraud of Alistair Greig, director of Midas Financial Solutions in Scotland. He was eventually jailed for 14 years by the High Court in Scotland for running a Ponzi scheme. The financial services compensation scheme has started paying out compensation to the victims of that fraud, but let us just say that it did not do so willingly. My constituents and many others have had to put together and invest more than £2 million in legal fees to get the FSCS to the point where it was prepared to pay out.

That is the sort of situation that we find ourselves in when we have a culture—an attitude among regulators and others—in which it is okay to leave the little people, who have smaller claims, swinging in the wind. That is the attitude that has to change, and that is why Treasury transparency is crucial here.