Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

James Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Like other hon. Members, I welcome the Government’s recent announcement and their timetable. Second Reading of the Bill tonight would be a significant step forward. However, as others have acknowledged, this has been a long saga that has tested the patience of all concerned.

The reports and analyses of the past decade are voluminous, and the saga has come to resemble a Dickensian tale that would not be out of place in a novel like “Bleak House”. I recognise that there are important questions—they have been debated in the House this evening—about the relative merits of the ombudsman versus Chadwick, and I, too, have reservations about key recommendations of the Chadwick report, but at the heart of the matter is morality. As the Public Administration Committee report of March 2009 said in response to the then Government’s response to the ombudsman’s reports, there is a clear moral dimension. The Committee said that it was morally indefensible for the Government to accept maladministration by public bodies without taking the necessary action to right those wrongs. We need to bear that message—that moral dimension—in mind as we debate this important Bill and this sorry saga, and we must not forget it.

Like other hon. Members, I have spoken to many of my constituents, and I know the human cost of this debacle. People who have worked hard and done the right thing have seen their dreams of retirement go down the drain. We cannot walk away from our moral duty to those people. That is why it is our duty to provide fair and appropriate compensation for them.

As other hon. Members have pointed out, there are wider policy implications. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) remarked, we need to build trust in our pension system, which has been tarnished principally by the Equitable Life debacle. We need a successful resolution to the matter. That would help not only to compensate Equitable Life policyholders, but to restore trust in our financial services industry. I welcome the Bill and the Government’s early decisions, but we cannot afford further delay. We need to do our duty to the people who have lost out in the Equitable Life debacle.

Equitable Life

James Morris Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That question may be amusing, but I am afraid that it is irrelevant to the Minister’s responsibilities, and he must not answer it.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

May I welcome the Minister’s announcement and the speed with which he has come to the House to outline the next steps in the process? Further to an earlier question, will he clarify the time scale in which he wants to receive further representations from interested parties? He said that he wants to reflect on Sir John’s findings, but can he give us an indication of the time scale for receiving those representations?

[Mr Hoban]

I have not set a formal deadline or time scale, but I am sure that over the summer recess, my hon. Friends will talk to policyholders in their constituencies and gather their views. The Leader of the House today announced a debate on 14 September, I believe, on Second Reading of the Equitable Life (Payments) Bill, which might give my hon. Friends the opportunity to make an oral representation.