Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jonathan Evans and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

In that case, he will feel that it is an absolute necessity to ensure that his llama always has pet insurance. He may well find that under the Bill, rather than simply taking out a generic insurance contract, he is asked a series of specific questions about his pet llama. They could include how long he has kept the llama, its age and the environment in which it is kept. He may well think to himself, “Well, this insurance could become quite expensive,” and feel that of all his insurance products, he can leave that one and take a risk. Poor old llama—it may well just have to take its chances.

[Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)]

Before the hon. Gentleman frightens my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) away from insuring his llama, I will follow my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), who declared his interest, and point out that I am a former director of NFU Mutual. That farming insurance company would find no difficulty whatever in providing insurance for a llama.

[Chris Leslie]

I think a deal has been transacted on the Floor of the House. However, under the provisions of the Bill, a series of disclosures may be requested from hon. Members seeking such insurance.

My point is simply that we need to know the impact that the Bill will have on pet insurance and other discretionary insurance, but also, perhaps more importantly, on essential types of personal insurance that we all want our constituents to have, such as household insurance, flood risk insurance and motor insurance. In those cases, there is less wiggle room for individuals to decide not to take out insurance.

There are separate discussions to be had in another place about the problem of certain drivers thinking, “Well, the fine that I get for driving uninsured is less than the cost of motor insurance, so I will take my chances and drive uninsured.” In my view, the penalty for driving uninsured needs to be higher than the cost of getting insurance. That is a pretty straightforward point, but you would be surprised, Mr Deputy Speaker, by the small fines that are sometimes issued to people who drive uninsured. I am sure that hon. Members will know of cases in which constituents have unfortunately been involved in accidents caused by uninsured drivers. When those uninsured drivers are prosecuted the fines are a pittance, which sends the message, “Why bother with insurance?” We must return to that issue, but it is a moot point whether it would fall under the scope of a review under the new clause.

Mandatory types of insurance are particularly important in the Bill. I can foresee circumstances, particularly with car insurance, in which the insurance sector feels that it is not getting much return. Many of our constituents howl with derision at the sheer expense of motor insurance—the AA recently said that it rose by about 16.4% in 2010. The Bill will make provision for the disclosure of certain extra pieces of information, even though people have no choice but to take out motor insurance if they want to drive; it is a legal requirement.

People will be surprised to find that even though motor insurance costs are escalating—that problem needs to be tackled in a number of ways—the insurance sector says that motor insurance is not massively profitable. The Association of British Insurers has described it as one of the most challenging products for insurers. I believe it has stated that premiums amounted to £10.7 billion and claims to £10.3 billion in 2010, so often the margins are not particularly great.

It is difficult for hon. Members, as non-experts in that trade, to know whether insurance companies are making significant profits, but let us take them at their word that they are not doing so. I can envisage a situation in which insurance companies say, “We want to back out”—pardon the pun, Mr Deputy Speaker—“of the motor insurance trade.” They might feel that in order to do so, they will deter new contracts for motor insurance. One way of doing that would be by placing a series of extra hurdles in front of customers wanting to obtain such insurance.

Many young drivers will know to their cost how difficult it can be to get insurance cover for their vehicles. I do not know whether the Minister has a driving licence—

Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Evans and Chris Leslie

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Evans]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. He approaches the issue with significant expertise, so he will know that, if we are to achieve justice, it is not just a question of treating all those pre-1992 policyholders in the same way as everybody after 1992. One would go back and assess the pre-1992 annuitants’ asset share to see whether they were paid 105%, 110%, 120% or 140% of asset share; and one would correct that, so that the pre-1992 and post-1992 annuitants were dealt with in a balanced way. The danger with the proposed approach is that there will not be that balance. It is already clear, from the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), that we do not have a basis for the figure of £200 million; it is a wet finger in the air in order to assess the situation.

The second factor that causes me significant concern is the lack of available actuarial information. I share all the concerns about the Chadwick process, and, although Sir John might have made an observation about the pre-1992 annuitants, he did not compute their liabilities. The danger, therefore, of being seduced by the strong arguments of the hon. Member for Leeds North East, is that we would enter into an open-ended commitment and have great difficulty realising its objective. During the debate, however, he has made a good case on behalf of those annuitants who go back to 1991. We should remember the judgment made by the ombudsman and her terms of reference. Most of the inquiries started looking at the period from 1999 onwards, but most of the condemnation about regulatory failure goes back to events prior to 1991. It is important that the Committee should take that factor into account when invited to say whether compensation should be granted going back very many years before that.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should like to speak to amendment 2, which is grouped with amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Mr Hamilton) and amendment 7, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson).

In wishing you a happy birthday, Mr Evans, let me say that I do not have any registrable financial interests in the matter under debate. However, I want to place on record that 18 months ago, some while before I was returned to the House, I was occasionally commissioned to give advice and training on parliamentary and public policy matters, and on one occasion, I undertook a day’s work for a company whose clients included the former chief executive of Equitable Life; by then, of course, its fund had been closed for many years. I thought it important to disclose that encounter for the avoidance of any doubt. Although I had a day’s work indirectly related to Equitable Life some time before coming into Parliament, I have not had any financial or policy discussions on the matter subsequently.

I have held this brief for a couple of weeks, and it has been an extremely steep learning curve of reviewing history and policy that dates back well over 25 years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East said. I was struck by the opening words of the House of Commons Library background note to the Bill:

“Describing the Equitable Life (Payments) Bill as the tip of an iceberg would be harsh on icebergs: at least they have 10% or so of their bulk above the water line. The Bill is but a tiny atoll below which lies the immense bulk of the Equitable Life tragedy.”

In general, I intend to be as supportive as I can of the Bill, as it is a positive step forward in the attempts to rectify a long and sorry saga. The amendment simply seeks to encourage the parliamentary ombudsman to

“report to Parliament on the implications for payments…of the findings of the Independent Commission on Equitable Life Payments, no later than one month after the publication of such findings.”

I do not want to go through the entire background that has brought us to this Committee stage today. By my count, eight separate inquiries, and possibly more, have done that, and there are conflicting and sometimes contradictory findings and accounts of what happened in the past and who should be responsible for rectifying the situation for policyholders. However, we know that in the spending review the Government accepted the ombudsman’s approach to maladministration and, more relevantly to this debate, to the framework for a compensation package. The Government say that they want to honour the interpretation of the ombudsman’s second report in full. That is their choice. There are clearly arguments in favour of that approach, as well as against it.

The Minister now places great emphasis—although it could be argued that he did so to a lesser degree before the general election, when there were a lot of loud campaigns on signing up to the EMAG pledge—on it being appropriate to consider the potential impact on the public purse of any payments of compensation in this case, as the ombudsman has said. The Treasury has concluded that it will initially focus on total relative loss as the basis for its payments and will cover those losses in full for post-1992 with-profits annuitants, to the tune of some £620 million. Some 37,000 individuals will be involved in that. That means that that group of with-profits annuitants will receive compensation equivalent to that which they would have gained had they invested in companies other than Equitable Life. However, because of the cap of about £1.5 billion that the Treasury is placing on the total payouts, the other 1 million or so policyholders, including annuitants with older policies—I presume, although I may be wrong about that—will have to have their compensation for relative loss adjusted to fit within the envelope available.

The Independent Commission on Equitable Life Payments, which is chaired by Brian Pomeroy, has been set up by the Minister to advise on the allocation of compensation to policyholders other than those with-profits annuitants, who will be getting 100% compensation. I am conscious of the words of Sir John Chadwick when I think through the technical challenge of administering a compensation payment scheme; it is important that its design and delivery are clear and efficient. I hope that we are not on the brink of a further failure that compounds the problems of the majority of policyholders by opting for a compensation scheme that could be so complex and opaque that it might risk grinding to a halt. We need a scheme that works in practice.

If the Minister is opting for the ombudsman’s approach—as I say, that is the Government’s choice—there are questions that need to be answered, and I would be grateful if he could reflect on those when he makes his comments. First, exactly how will the apportionment of the relative loss figures for other policyholders not receiving 100% compensation be calculated under the ombudsman’s approach, if we will not be following the Chadwick methodology given the Government’s acceptance of all 10 findings by the ombudsman?

Secondly, will the other policyholders—the vast majority—be classified into broad categories or subject to individual assessment of their cases? Will there be any burden of proof requirement on the other policyholders in the assessment of their relative loss, or is it likely that the compensation scheme will have some assumed automaticity in all cases? I ask that only because the ombudsman’s findings of loss are very specifically linked to a policyholder’s reliance on the regulatory return data. She said:

“I find that injustice was sustained by any policyholder who relied on information contained in the society’s returns between 1990 and 1996.”

I am trying to get a sense of precisely how that process will work.

Thirdly, how will the payment scheme take into account all the other maladministration factors for other policyholders that Sir John Chadwick’s methodology would not have covered, if we are following a classification scheme?

Whatever compensation scheme the independent commission eventually alights upon, it is an important starting point to establish that it is consistent with the Minister's intentions—in other words, that it encompasses all the parliamentary ombudsman’s conclusions. I gather that there are moves afoot by the Public Administration Committee to interpret whether the ombudsman’s model aligns with the payment scheme that eventually emerges. That might be a good idea, but perhaps it is a little circuitous. It would be far better, in my view, to give the ombudsman directly the right and the opportunity to say publicly whether the payment scheme is indeed in keeping with the spirit of her own findings. She could then say whether the total relative loss figures are accurate and whether the compensation scheme is fair, particularly given the controversy over the dates and whether some people will or will not be included in the 100% compensation for with-profits annuitants. The purpose of our amendment is simply to give voice to the ombudsman so that she can confirm her view.

It is worth noting at this stage that, far from granting the wishes of the Equitable Life policyholders regarding everything they wanted, the main pressure group formed to speak for their interests, EMAG, is angry and perplexed at the nature of the compensation scheme envisaged by Ministers and the constraints placed on the independent payments commission. EMAG says on its website:

“The independent Commission’s recently torn up terms of reference have not at this date”—

this was a week after the announcement in the spending review—

“yet been replaced.”

It says that the Minister’s letter of 20 October to the commission’s chairman

“makes clear that retrospectively the remit will now totally exclude”

the full class of with-profits annuitants. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East alluded to that point. EMAG continues:

“So its remit now is to divvy up £775m between 600,000 and to suggest the prioritisation. This surely cannot be what the Parliamentary Ombudsman had in mind as the role for the independent Commission?”

Given this question mark over the parliamentary ombudsman’s intentions, we felt it important to table the amendment to try to give voice to that.

There is doubt about whether the compensation arrangements are as much in alignment with the ombudsman’s approach as the Financial Secretary would like to argue, and I hope that our amendment will give the ombudsman a chance swiftly to comment on the calibre of the scheme and clarify once and for all whether it fits with her approach. We believe that that can be done quickly, and there seems to us to be no reason why it could not happen within one month of the publication of the scheme’s proposals. There would not be any reason to delay payments, and it would aid transparency and confirm whether the Government’s arrangements via the commission’s payment scheme were the same as those envisaged by the ombudsman. Although amendment 2 may be a belt-and-braces approach, at this stage of the saga we need some cast-iron assurances all round.

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[Chris Leslie]

I am glad that the Minister has been able to reiterate points that he did not make in his Third Reading speech. I do not necessarily want to reopen the box entirely, but it is important for both parties to recognise that mistakes have been made, and that things should and could have been done better by those on both sides. In particular, however, I think it is important not to gain the impression that failings did not occur on the watch of the Minister’s party. Lord Penrose found that Conservative Ministers

“argued against reform in the… 1990s”,

and that the United Kingdom “led the resistance” to Europe-wide attempts to update the third life directive. Those who argue that Labour alone fell short in respect of reacting to the Equitable Life debacle should realise that the ideological approach pursued by the Conservatives was absolutely central to causing the mess in the first place.

As Members know, the last Government would have chosen a different route to compensation. We were anxious that a poorly designed compensation scheme might entail a person-by-person review aimed at disentangling individual losses one by one, examining more than 30 million investment decisions by 1.5 million people over 20 years. That would have been a mammoth administrative task. Moreover, the ombudsman had implied that individuals would need to prove that they had relied on the regulatory returns and had been misled as a result. The last Government did not believe that such an approach could be feasible.

It was for those reasons that Sir John Chadwick was asked to explore a more realistic and reliable payment scheme methodology. He concluded that the Treasury should deal with the issue by grouping cases into about 20 broad categories of policyholders who were in similar circumstances. The payment scheme would then deduce the relative loss in each category in comparison with the outcomes of a basket of other policies that had not suffered from the same regulatory failings. The Government have clearly embarked on a different course, although they have taken up some of Chadwick’s pragmatic suggestions about the automaticity of compensation. We genuinely hope that that will work.

We are pleased that this short paving Bill is before the House, because we feel strongly that the matter should be resolved. The Committee stage gave us an opportunity to question the Government on several aspects of their approach, and I am glad that we have had an opportunity to draw them out further today.

Let me end by simply raising a question mark over the words of Ministers before May, when the general election took place, in comparison with their actions today. Many hundreds of thousands of Equitable Life policyholders—possibly as many as 1 million—were led to believe that in signing the EMAG pledge, Ministers were supporting a particular outcome that may not now arrive. Most Conservative Members signed that pledge. They pledged to their constituents that

“if I am elected to Parliament at the next general election, I will support and vote for proper compensation for victims of the Equitable Life scandal and I will support and vote to set up a swift, simple, transparent and fair payment scheme—independent of government—as recommended by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.”

As the payment decisions are made in the next few years and the cheques finally start to arrive, EMAG members and policyholders who are not in line to receive 100% compensation for their full relative losses will have to draw their own conclusions as to whether the Government have fulfilled their promises. So far the signs are that many policyholders do not feel that those Members who signed the pledge are keeping their word. They feel that the scheme will fall short of proper compensation and a fair payment scheme.

[Jonathan Evans]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) as he has attended the entire debate.

[Jonathan Evans]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that £1.5 billion does not amount to proper compensation. I came to watch the earlier debate when the Minister was the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), and he was standing by the Chadwick figure, but the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) now seems to be saying that four times more than the position the Labour party were defending back then is not proper compensation.

[Chris Leslie]

The difference between the hon. Gentleman and me is that I did not sign the EMAG pledge. I always felt, as did many of my colleagues, that there were real and practical difficulties in raising constituents’ hopes in the way that the hon. Gentleman perhaps did. That is a matter for him and his constituents. It is up to him to convince them that the result of these deliberations has been to put in place full and fair compensation in accordance with the pledge. I am simply making the point that this is a matter of honour for those hon. Members who signed the pledge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

A reasonable point from the hon. Lady. All I am saying is that the pledge that some Members signed did not say explicitly, “As resources allow.” [Interruption.] No, it does not say that in the pledge. The pledge simply says that they will have a fair and transparent payments scheme. I doubt very much that the vast majority of those other policyholders who will not be getting the 100%—clearly it will be welcomed by those with-profits annuitants, who are receiving 100% of their relative losses—but may be receiving, I am told, between 15 and 20% of their relative losses will feel that hon. Members who raised their hopes are actually fulfilling them.

[Jonathan Evans]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is new to his role, but I would have hoped that he had read the ombudsman’s report before representing the Opposition at the Dispatch Box. He would have seen that the ombudsman says that the compensation figure must take account of the effect on the public purse.

[Chris Leslie]

I completely accept that that is what it says in the detail of the ombudsman’s report, but it does not say that in the pledge that the hon. Gentleman signed. In an electoral context, he raised the hopes of many of his constituents. He may be able to face them and say, “Absolutely, I am fulfilling what I promised.” If he feels that and they are happy with it, they will re-elect him, and everybody will be happy and ride off into the sunset, but I have a feeling that some policyholders will continue to be discontented with the Government’s position. It certainly did not say, either in the manifestos or in the pledge that he signed, perhaps scribbled in a little addendum, “Oh, by the way, we are going to give you only a fraction of the £4.5 billion to £6 billion that you understand as the relative losses.” That is simply not there. I am not claiming, because I did not sign that pledge, to have raised those hopes, but Members on the Government Benches did.