Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Stephen Lloyd

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I hope that in continuing my comments I shall answer his question.

I have long believed that the Equitable saga is a moral issue for us in Parliament. We sought, through the Financial Services Authority, to regulate financial institutions such as Equitable so that those who invested their valuable savings to ensure their future income were protected against fraud and maladministration. Our own ombudsman, Ann Abraham—she works for us—called the failure to regulate Equitable “catastrophic” and pointed to examples of savers encouraged to invest with that company long after it clearly could no longer meet its obligations.

If we as a nation want to encourage people to save and to provide for their retirement and old age, in addition to what they will receive in state pension, it is essential that the companies offering those savings products can be trusted and relied on. With hindsight, we can see that Equitable clearly could not deliver to the hundreds of thousands of investors who trusted it and those people have been badly let down as a result. We had an obligation to ensure that that could not happen and we now have an obligation—indeed, a duty—to ensure that those who have lost out are fairly compensated for all their losses. This matter is above crude party politics; it is an obligation to which 380 sitting MPs signed up before the last election when they put their names to EMAG’s pledge. We must not let the policyholders down now.

Let me relate some heartbreaking cases that will illustrate better than I can just how people have suffered as a result of Equitable’s failure. One of my constituents, Mrs B of Leeds, has written:

“I signed for my With Profits Annuity in March 1991, investing £57,000. I am really suffering just now with my husband now being disabled and I am still trying to work four days a week to make ends meet. I receive only £141 a month from Equitable and it will continue to reduce. Surely all With Profits Annuitants should be included in the compensation! Have I been harbouring false hopes all these months? If so, there does not seem any point in my continuing to write to my MP or the Prime Minister.”

Another policyholder, Mr D, who is not a constituent of mine as far as I am aware but will be a constituent of somebody in the House, writes:

“In his letter of 20 October Mark Hoban refers to the government’s concern with the plight of the WPAs. However, he fails even to mention the Government’s decision that those who started to receive their annuities before September 1992 are to get nothing. This is in spite of the fact that they too have not been allowed to get out, are continuing to suffer, year by year, reductions in their annuities and are older than any of us.

Fortunately Paul Braithwaite [the Secretary of EMAG] perceived from the first what was going on and has placed the matter of the treatment of the pre-September 1992 WPAs at the top of the agenda for a judicial review. However”—

this is the crux of what Mr D says—

“I think our MPs are fair minded enough to perceive for themselves how unjust the proposed action of the Government is. I am writing to my MP straight away.”

Whoever that might be should look out for the letter.

Once an annuity has been purchased it cannot be sold or changed, so the with-profits annuitants who took out annuities before the September 1992 cut-off date are trapped.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his work. It has been a pleasure to work with him on this issue and I support his amendment. In a nutshell, on the moral case, the parliamentary ombudsman and Sir John Chadwick both said in writing in advance that all the annuitants should be treated equally and that these annuitants should not be excluded, not least because they are the oldest and most frail.

[Mr Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks about the work I have done but, as the Committee will know, he is the secretary of the all-party group on justice for Equitable Life policyholders, and I thank him for his efforts in this regard. He is absolutely right: Sir John Chadwick did say that, as I shall mention later.

The with-profits annuitants who took out annuities before the September 1992 cut-off date are as trapped as those who purchased them after that date and their incomes diminish each year. Having taken out policies that they believed would allow them to make ends meet in old age, they now face increasing poverty because Parliament did not act soon enough to prevent the collapse of Equitable. That is why we owe them the compensation that they deserve as much as the post-1992 with-profits annuitants.

What is so important about September 1992? Let me give further reasons why this is an artificial and unfair cut-off date, which I seek to stop with my amendment. First, annuities could not be exchanged once bought, so every annuitant has suffered from the consequences of regulatory failure irrespective of when their annuity was taken out or what extra bonuses were added. The cut-off date ignores the views of the parliamentary ombudsman, Ann Abraham, and Lord Chadwick in their reports. Even Chadwick, who came up with a much smaller overall compensation package than the £1.5 billion now on the table, agreed that the pre-1992 with-profits annuitants should not be excluded, as the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) pointed out.

It is said that because of the changes to the computer system, Equitable’s records prior to late 1992 were not available, but the current chief executive of Equitable, Chris Wiscarson, who has been extremely helpful, has previously stated that this is a problem that could be surmounted. The parliamentary ombudsman has previously made it clear that nobody would sensibly have invested in Equitable after 1 July 1991 had the regulator acted effectively and transparently. If that situation had been made apparent to the media and the public at that time, nobody would have sensibly invested after that date.

It seems clear to me that anybody who took out a policy between July 1991 and September 1992 is being unfairly penalised simply because of a change in Equitable’s computer system. This is exacerbated by the fact that policies brought out in this period had the longest exposure to the adverse effects of maladministration. The coalition Government gave a commitment to

“implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policy holders, through an independent payment scheme, for their relative loss as a consequence of regulatory failure.”

My amendment would ensure that this commitment could be carried out properly and at a relatively small additional cost.

Let me be clear. I am not recommending that we take some of the compensation from the 37,000 who have already been promised 100% compensation, which amounts to about 50% of the total offered by the Government. I am suggesting that we bring forward the £100 million of the total package that was proposed to be given in the next Parliament, and that we add to that a further £100 million from current, albeit limited, reserves.

As I said earlier, I believe that this is a moral obligation and that Equitable pensioners are looking to us, their recently elected representatives in this Parliament, for justice, which is why I intend to press the amendment to a vote so that there can be no discrimination between with-profit annuitants according to when they purchased those annuities.