Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Karen Lumley Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for her maiden speech. I have heard many great maiden speeches since I arrived here, and I shall now be adding Congleton to my long list of places to visit in the UK.

My colleagues have made a great many points today, so I shall be extremely brief. I, too, signed the Equitable Life pledge before the election, because I believed that the Equitable Life policyholders needed to be compensated. I am therefore delighted to see that we are moving towards a swift resolution for them. They had to wait more than 10 years under the previous Administration, when there was money in the pot to pay them, although the will to do so was obviously not there.

Like other hon. Members, I have had many letters from my constituents on this matter, and as a result I had a meeting with them in Redditch on Friday night. Let me tell the House that there was standing room only. Emotions were running high and I have to say that it was a pretty uncomfortable hour. I listened to some heartbreaking stories, including that of a constituent who had put not only his and his wife’s money into Equitable Life but that of his 15 employees too. I just cannot tell the House how bad he felt. I left that meeting feeling angry that my constituents have had to wait more than 10 years for justice, and I think that the previous Government should be ashamed of themselves for not dealing with this matter earlier.

But we are where we are. I want to say to the Minister that those people have suffered enough and, while I am grateful to him for settling the issue as soon as possible, I urge him, during his difficult negotiations in the Treasury regarding the spending review, to look closely at the compensation package that my constituents will receive. In these difficult times, I urge him to remember the pledge that most of us on this side of the House signed.

I will support the Bill tonight, but I hope that the Minister has listened carefully to what Members on both sides of the House have said about the fairness of the compensation scheme. Our constituents will await with interest the outcome of the spending review on 20 October.