Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Jim McGovern

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. First, there would be relatively few annuitants from further back in time. Clearly, a person who retired in 1981 or 1985 would be getting on a bit in years now, so only a small number of people would be involved. Secondly, Equitable must have records showing what bonuses were paid at different times.

The further back the scheme goes before 1991, the fewer annuitants there will be who demand or need that compensation, but the need will be greater because of the frailty and the loss in the value of those annuities since then. Since 1991, those annuitants, even though they may have had bonuses before that, continue to see a decline because of the maladministration, which affects them as much as it affects post-1992 annuitants. I hope I have at least partly answered the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

Actuaries are sometimes disdainfully referred to as people who found accountancy too exciting, but surely a good actuary would be able to calculate the sums in question, whether for pre-1991 or post-1991 annuitants.

[Mr Hamilton]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that very good point. We are talking about many hundreds of thousands of policyholders throughout the United Kingdom, but we know that there are about 37,000 or so post-1992 with-profits annuitants. We think there are about 10,000 pre-1992 such annuitants, but the further back we go the fewer there will be, so if it was a difficult, time-consuming exercise to work out relative losses for all policyholders, which it certainly was, which is why Sir John Chadwick was engaged, it will surely be a much easier exercise for the far fewer people who are with-profits annuitants prior to 1991. My hon. Friend’s point goes some way to answering the question.