Equitable Life

Debate between Huw Merriman and George Kerevan

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for initiating the debate, and I have been asked by my constituents to thank him for everything that he has done on their behalf over the years.

In 2010, when standing for election in North East Derbyshire, I engaged with many Equitable Life policyholders. They were your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, and they were full of praise for the work that you had done on their behalf. I added that to a lengthy list of reasons why you were returned and I was not. Having served my apprenticeship, I put some of those best practices to good effect when I was selected for the constituency of Bexhill and Battle, and was subsequently elected.

All the constituents with whom I have interacted have put their positions with clarity and with understanding of the economic challenges that the Government face in balancing the books. Given that those people had planned to save so sensibly for their own retirement, it is clear that prudence and budget-planning were second nature to them. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who has responded to my numerous items of correspondence on this subject both in person and in writing. Her explanations, and the time that she has given to explaining, have helped me to communicate with my impacted constituents, and for that I am very grateful.

As I interpret a recent letter from the Treasury, prompted by one of my constituents, I understand that the Government have closed the scheme to new compensation claims, and will reallocate unclaimed moneys remaining in the pool to policyholders who are receiving pension credit. I had understood the words

“I am sorry to say that no changes to the funds allocated to the Scheme are planned”

to mean that no new moneys would be added to the pool, and that the £1.5 billion paid out would be the final payment, in the light of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s direction that the Government should have regard to the impact on public finances. However, one of my more eagle-eyed constituent policyholders has read those words to mean that, while the manner in which the funds within the pool are to be allocated is fixed, that does not expressly rule out the possibility that new funds could be added to the pool, and go towards the £2.6 billion shortfall, during the current term.

I should be grateful if the Minister made it clear whether any further funds for the pool are expressly ruled out for this term, so that I can pass on that clarification to my constituents. It may sound perverse, but many of them would accept that position, because they have reached a stage at which they would like to have absolute finality, and to know whether it makes sense for them to continue funding the fight.

I also want to say something about the stated position for with-profits policyholders. The letter that I received from the Treasury states that they were compensated in full. I understand that the proxy value of the pensions of pre-1995 with-profits policyholders was calculated by virtue of a benchmark from the Prudential, which was considered to be a similar proxy for their own policies. However, I understand that in the case of post-1995 with-profits policyholders, the proxy value was calculated by the benchmarking of not only Prudential, but Scottish Widows. The appropriateness of the latter as a benchmark was disputed by some of my constituents on the grounds that it was a poorly performing policy. Those policyholders dispute the claim that they have received full value, and have drawn distinctions between their own policy and that of the Prudential, and the policy of Scottish Widows. I should like the Minister to tell me whether my understanding is correct. Perhaps he will also comment on why the Scottish Widows policy was seen as a fair benchmark for this exercise, if my contention is indeed along the right lines.

I should add that I empathise hugely with all the policyholders who have been impacted by the losses to their policies. However, I am also conscious that this matter was determined before my election, and that I was elected on a manifesto which promised to deliver a budget surplus. Adding a further £2.6 billion would mean that other constituents of mine would have to provide for it. I have explained that difficult concept in person to my impacted constituents, because I believe in being direct when a resolution is unlikely to be arrived at, and I am indebted to them for the manner in which they have responded to my direct approach.

[George Kerevan]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he prefers delivering a budget surplus to delivering justice?

[Huw Merriman]

I was elected on the basis that there would indeed be a budget surplus. I think that it would be wrong of me to stand up and try to proclaim—this was mentioned earlier—that £2.6 billion could be found down the back of the sofa. If only it were that easy. I also believe in being direct and straight with my constituents, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman thinks that I am doing so now.

I support the Government in their approach to this difficult issue. Let me end by asking the Minister, on behalf of my constituents, whether the funding of the scheme is indeed final for this term, and whether the use of the Scottish Widows policy benchmark was justifiable.

Finance Bill

Debate between Huw Merriman and George Kerevan

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

My hon. Friend puts the point much better than I could have. I commend the Committee for this section of this debate, because it is where it is at its most thoughtful and most articulate—perhaps because it is at the close of business.

The by-product of the regime to which I made reference is that foreign investment banks have moved their head offices from London to their home nations but not necessarily their jobs. That means that UK taxpayers are not liable for bank failure in the same way as they would have been previously. The point I wish to articulate is we should not just think of tax as the means to control the behaviour of banks; we should look at the regulation, and the separation of investment banks and retail banks. That has been a success.

As we move into the newer regime and as banks, to use their own rating, would be on “negative watch”, it is right that they pay an increased premium for the risk that still exists. We should absolutely be on our guard in that respect. It is also right that we treat them as another corporation—with corporation tax but with the tax in addition on profits. To address the point made in an intervention, I do believe that there are buffers within, but I also do not think it requires an amendment to state that the Treasury must undertake a periodical review, because the Treasury will of course do that on a daily and weekly basis. Given the support that this Government have given to allow challenger banks to be set up, the Treasury will of course ensure that the help is provided and that this is on watch throughout.

I welcome this change of approach, and believe the time has moved on from when we have a bank levy towards when we have an ordinary tax on profits. On that basis, I very much support the Government’s line.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

I will be brief, Mr Howarth. I just wanted to respond to some of the points made by my colleague the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier). Nobody from my side of the House disputes that the bank levy was in need of reform. Indeed, he made it sound far too well organised and manufactured; it was ad hoc, arbitrary and unpredictable, and it definitely needed to be replaced by something more predictable. Therefore, we are in no way rejecting the notion of moving to a surcharge on profits, which could be an effective way of raising the funds from the banks and, in a sense, of surcharging them for the social service that we provide through the Treasury in protecting them.

I do not go as far as the hon. Gentleman in relation to what I would describe as the gentle blackmail from HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank. If anyone looks at the turmoil in the Asian markets and in China at the moment, they will not think that it was a good moment for a bank to shift their headquarters from London to Hong Kong.

Let us accept that there will be a change. Our view is that we need a mechanism that allows the Treasury to use statutory instruments to vary the rate and the application of the surcharge as it evolves and as we learn whether it is impacting adversely on some banks, building societies and mutuals. That is all we are saying. We are trying to find common ground with the Chancellor. We are moving in the same direction, but the Government are rushing the application. They are making it too uniform and are choosing arbitrarily a rate of surcharge that is simply designed to reproduce the current level of tax yield. That is a bad way of approaching how we manage the surcharge on the banks.

I suppose the essence of the argument—this is really where I want to go—is that there are differences between the challenger banks and the larger banks. Those differences are not just based on their level of profit. It is quite clear that it is proportionately more expensive for the smaller banks to provide the capital to support the credit risk in their loans once it is weighted against their risky assets. We know that from the work that has been done by the Competition and Markets Authority, and I would prefer to take its view rather than the special pleading from the banks—even the special pleading from the challenger banks.

The Competition and Markets Authority has looked at the expense to the different scale of banks in providing the capital to support their credit risk. It has come up with figures that say that on a typical £100,000 loan to a small business, a challenger bank, or a bank of that scale, has to put aside roughly £8,000 per £100,000 loan, compared with about £6,000 from one of the very large banks. The mathematical reason for that is quite simple; it is not rocket science. The smaller bank with the smaller balance sheet is carrying proportionately more systemic risk on each loan. When a small bank loses a customer or has a non-performing loan, it is quite costly to it given the scale of its balance sheet. Therefore, when we start doing the risk-weighted analysis, it will have to put more capital by; it will cost it more. It is economies of scale. Big banks have economies of scale. A specific non-performing loan to a small business is a relatively small risk to the larger bank, so the cost to it will be small. It follows on from the matters of big and small economies of scale. Nevertheless, they act as a barrier to the smaller banks being able to grow.

If we impose a uniform profits surcharge on all the banks, there is a higher real burden on the smaller banks. I would like the Treasury to take that into account as we move along, and have the powers to be able swiftly to shift the rates. I was trying not to be prescriptive in laying down how we would set different levels for different kinds of banks; I wanted a system to evolve. I want the Treasury to have the powers to do that so that if it does prove to be more costly for the challenger banks and to be taking more from their profits and their ability to raise capital, we might think about different kinds of banding, and that would be up to the Treasury to consider. We are simply saying that the smaller banks have different cost structures and therefore different risk elements, which means that imposing a single levy on profits across all the banks, big and small, is a bit too arbitrary and a bit too ad hoc. In other words, it brings us back to the sort of problems that we had with the original bank levy.