Equitable Life Policyholders: Compensation

Debate between Robert Neill and Bob Blackman

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

Indeed. Unfortunately, as we know, many of the individuals affected by the scandal are deep into old age. They may be very vulnerable, and, regrettably, there are fewer and fewer of them every day. For every day that goes by without them receiving proper compensation, the scandal is maintained.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

My hon. Friend just made an important point about the significance of London’s international reputation. That depends, in part, on the strength of our regulatory environment. Does it not follow, as a matter of both good policy and common decency, that when there is a massive regulatory failure, the Government should be seen to stand behind those who lose out as a consequence?

[Bob Blackman]

I absolutely agree with that comment. I want to say something about the commitments we have made, which are very important. As I have said, the former Chancellor accepted the reality of the situation at the Dispatch Box. He said:

“I accept the findings of the parliamentary ombudsman in full.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 960.]

Let us be clear about the parliamentary ombudsman’s findings at the time. There had been 10 years—a decade—of regulatory failure, which was responsible for the losses suffered by pensioners when Equitable Life collapsed. In her report, which was 2,872 pages long by the way, she recommended that the Government

“should restore complainants to the position they would have been in, had maladministration not occurred”.

I believe that we should ensure we honour the commitments we have made and honour the situation in law.

I note that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary is a former member of the all-party group and a strong supporter of justice for the Equitable Life policyholders. I know him to be an honourable man, and I know he will want to do the best he can for the people who have suffered such losses.

The ask today is very simple. The pre-1992 trapped annuitants, who are the most vulnerable group—I am afraid that, every day, fewer and fewer are with us any longer—should be compensated in full, even though that is outside the scope of the legislation. Full compensation for those individuals would cost the Government less than £100 million. For the people who have received compensation for 22.4% of their losses, a plan should be set out to enable them to receive full compensation. I am not expecting that to happen straightaway—it may take time—but those people should receive compensation as the economy recovers. We could have a plan so that, in line with the recovery of the economy, much more money is paid out. That would fair, reasonable and—dare I say?— equitable.

In conclusion, I look forward to my hon. Friend giving us some commitments and clear guidance on what the Treasury will do to assist people who invested and did the right thing. This House owes a debt of honour to those individuals, and those of us who support these honourable people will not rest until such time as they receive every penny piece of the compensation to which they are entitled.

Equitable Life

Debate between Robert Neill and Bob Blackman

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that clear statement.

There are three sets of policyholders: the pre-1992 trapped annuitants, who were to get not a single penny under the compensation scheme; the with-profits annuitants, who were to get 100% compensation; and the pension holders, who got 22.4% of their relative losses, as my hon. Friend said. The coalition Government set up a compensation scheme, which I was pleased to support. However, it is a scandal that if someone purchased their policy on 31 August 1992, they got nothing, but if they purchased it on 1 September 1992, they got 100%. The rationale was that if the pre-1992 trapped annuitants had looked at the regulated accounts, they could have seen that there was a problem and that it was a scam. The reality is that when people sign up to such schemes, they do not expect to have to do that. I applaud the Government for taking steps, following the legislation, to partly compensate the pre-1992 trapped annuitants.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has done great work with the other members of the all-party parliamentary group. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the fact that, as you know, for a number of reasons I will not be able to stay for the whole debate. Many of my constituents were victims of this scam. Does he agree that when there has been a failure of regulation, as there was in this case, the Government essentially stand behind the regulator, so the moral responsibility ultimately falls on the Government, regardless of party? Although the coalition did something, the financial constraints that enabled it to argue that it was not able to do as much as we would have wished at that time are beginning to ease. Do not decency, honesty and equity demand that we revisit the amount of compensation that is due to these people, who saved and did the right thing, and who, frankly, have been let down by Government agencies as much as by Equitable Life?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that clear conclusion.

The Government allocated £1.5 billion of compensation to policyholders who had lost money. Some £45 million was then promised and delivered to the pre-1992 trapped annuitants. The Chancellor accepted at the Dispatch Box in November 2010 that the total loss was some £4.1 billion, so the shortfall in compensation is £2.6 billion.

“Councillors on the Frontline”

Debate between Robert Neill and Bob Blackman

Thursday 5th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke.

This is an excellent report—but I would say that, because I am a member of the Select Committee. As always, under the inspired chairmanship of the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), we ensured that we agreed things unanimously and did things based on consensus. That is the spirit in which we should approach this report and the role of a councillor in modern-day life.

Prior to coming to the Chamber, I was in the Tea Room discussing this debate with a colleague who said, “The problem is that I used to be a councillor and used to run weekly surgeries, and no one would turn up. Since I have become an MP, my weekly surgeries have been packed and almost all the people are coming to see me about local authority matters.” That brought out the dilemma that we all face.

I want to pose some challenges beyond the report, to an extent, and answer some important issues. First, what is the barrier to becoming a councillor? Why do people do this? I spent 24 years as a Brent councillor, including four years on the London assembly, and served on the fire authority, so I have reasonably wide experience. I served in a position in the London borough of Brent in which I lived through every possible form of administration, bar none.

I will not go into the wacky world of London borough of Brent politics, but suffice it to say that in the 1980s, when I was first elected, committee meetings were jam packed to the rafters, with standing room only in the council chamber. Now, they are lucky if they can get the local reporter to turn up, let alone any members of the public. We have disconnected the public from local authorities in many ways. That is a bad thing, which has happened over many years.

People become councillors for one of three reasons. First, it is often because they have a passion for one or more local issues, which are really about their local area, not even about the borough, and they want to see change and make things happen for their local people, which is laudable. Sadly, those people often become rapidly disillusioned. We found during discussions that a number of councillors serve a single term, and we lose their expertise that they have built up, because they have got frustrated and no longer wish to serve their local community. We have to deal with that in a big way.

Secondly, there are the political zealots—the people who have an axe to grind about the politics—who join. They are probably lobby fodder for whoever is running the council or is in opposition. They have a political axe to grind and will do anything in that respect. Sadly, many of those continue in councils year after year and often, in my experience, poison the atmosphere on all three sides in the main political groups.

Thirdly, there are the people who want to get on and do something else, either to become leaders in the council and take on executive roles or go on somewhere in politics, sometimes using local authorities that are known to be safe for Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats as a means to get into Parliament or some other representative body. Often, those people are very talented and progress rapidly through the ranks, but they are always—I have to say it: here is the pointer—out for what they can achieve and the kudos they can gain during the short period when they are serving, which is, I think, a great frustration.

There are clear barriers. One problem is the change from the old committee system, where every vote and argument was made in public and every councillor serving on that committee had to justify their vote to members of the public observing what they said, to the cabinet system or strong leader, or mayoral, model, where all the decisions—let us be clear about this—are taken in private and then rolled out in public to be rubber-stamped. That prevents political groups from reining back on political decisions that have been taken.

One of the opportunities of the committee system was that officers presented reports and political groups could take a view on those, and then a debate would follow, after which a decision could be made. Often now, with a cabinet system, such reports are endorsed by the political group and the individual member on the cabinet; it is then difficult for people to change their mind about a decision that has been taken, when they find out that the public do not like the decision. As a result of that, many people are now put off from becoming councillors, because they do not want to serve on a local authority.

There is a difference between executive councillors, who are either full-time councillors or significantly part-time members, and back-bench councillors—call them front-line councillors, or what you will—who are often struggling for a role. I concur with the Committee chairman: in Sunderland we saw that, clearly, a lot of work had gone on to ensure that all councillors saw that there was a benefit in their role.

The only drawback in allowing councillors power over spending money is pork barrel politics, with people saying, “I’ll spend some money in your area, provided that you get votes for me, come the election.” Local politics has been fraught with such difficulty over many years, with suspicion that particular organisations have received funding in return for votes. There is a big risk in such an approach. Although the sums are relatively small, they can have a significant effect. That is not a reason not to do it, but there have to be controls in place to ensure that this is truly beneficial for the local community, and truly acceptable measures have to be in place. The process has to be seen to be transparent, auditable and appropriate.

On training councillors, one problem is that many members do not have much experience of public life, really, when first elected. They come on to the council for a reason—we have talked about that—and local authorities, in the main, give them a quick briefing and say, “Good luck, you’re on your own.” That is the risk.

We need proper training programmes throughout a councillor’s career that are appropriate to their individual needs, and we neglect that far too often. As several hon. Members have said, having member-led, member-controlled councils with members who are experts in their field, who can take decisions and who can get officers to do what the community wants, is beneficial to the officers, the community and the wider public. Far too often, such training is neglected.

One of the problems that we always had when managing budgets was that it was very easy to cut a training budget—whether training for officers or for members, it did not really matter. People would always say, “Let’s cut the training budget, because we do not need it.” Actually, training and education should always be invested in, because that is the way to get better officers, better councillors, better decisions and better value for money. I would caution against the cutting of training budgets.

On the structure of councils, I will share the current experience in Harrow to show the problems of the current cabinet structure. Harrow has 63 councillors. There are five individual councillors—a rag-bag of various types—25 Conservative councillors, 25 Labour councillors and eight independent Labour councillors. That makes it difficult to have a strong leader model.

People might be surprised to learn that, of the eight independent Labour members, the leader of the council is independent Labour, six independent Labour councillors are members of the cabinet and the mayor is an independent Labour councillor. So all of them have executive positions, yet they form a small minority of the council. That is the problem of the current structure of local government, in which minorities can take huge control because they are the balance between the major parties. That is an extreme example, but it can happen and I think it is one of the drawbacks of the current system. That is one of the reasons why we need to redress the structure back to a more committee-based system, rather than the cabinet system. That is my personal preference.

Another issue is remuneration and whether councillors should be full time, part time or volunteers. My view is that there is a difference between people who lead a council, or who hold an executive position, and those who are critiquing or being a front-line councillor. The fact is that leading a council is a full-time job.

When I was the leader of a council back in the early 1990s, I had a full-time job. I would go into the council first thing in the morning to ensure that everything was hunky dory, and then I would go off to work. I came back at 6 o’clock and never left the council before 11 o’clock, which without question affected my career. People said, “Oh, you are not really committed to the job you are doing.” During that time the most I ever got in a single year for that service was the princely sum of some £1,300. I knew what the position was when I took it on, but we should recognise that people are doing that sort of job, which is a strain, and they should be properly remunerated for doing it.

Given the electoral cycle, and given that someone can be in the role at one moment and voted out the next, we must have a position on whether they are protected with a pension and, potentially, redundancy payments. We have gone from a position in which people volunteered for the council and, to a certain extent, were recompensed for a small amount for their time—their expenses, telephone bills and, if they had them, care costs were probably paid for—to a position in which they have an allowance as a councillor and special responsibility allowances on top of that.

However, there has never been a job description, a contract of employment or a position on redundancy and what happens at the end of a term. Pensions were never mentioned. It was always ad hoc. We have gone from people being complete volunteers to being full-time employees, but they are not really full-time employees. That is something that successive Governments and regimes have failed to address. We have to bite the bullet and do something about that.

The make-up of councils is a real problem. The numbers of both women and ethnic minority people are not representative of the community. As the Chairman of the Select Committee said, the average councillor is white, male and aged 60, which cannot be right because it is not fully representative of our community. It is incumbent on political parties to make that change. I am pleased to say that, come the local elections next year, of the 27 proposed candidates in my constituency 11 are women and 18 come from minority ethnic communities, and that number could be stretched further if people from certain other minority communities are included. That shows that we are trying to make a change at local level ourselves.

My concern is that after the 2006 local elections—I cannot speak for the 2010 local elections—the London boroughs of Brent and Harrow represented 40% of ethnic minority councillors in the whole of London. In London, which is probably the most ethnically diverse city in the world, it has to be bad news that councillors across our boroughs are not representative of the communities they face. I commend the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), the ex-leader of Lambeth council, on the steps taken there in 2010. That is good news, but we are woefully short of both women and ethnic minority councillors.

Most people, if challenged to do so on the doorstep, are unable to name their councillors. That is a problem faced by councillors across the board. Talking to communities in community languages is all-important, and representing those communities is difficult for people who do not understand such community languages. Often, the people who need help have difficulty speaking English—they always have English as an additional language—and therefore having councillors who can speak those community languages is terribly helpful for representing them in the council, for understanding their problems and for dealing with the ward work that follows. That issue needs to be addressed with appropriate action from the political parties, rather than from the Government.

There is also the issue of councillors as the leaders of their communities. One of the thrusts under the previous Government was to get to a point at which councillors spent more time in their community talking to residents’ groups, charities, community groups and so on. In my experience, the problem has been that there is then a disconnect between councillors understanding what the council does—inputting into and critiquing the work of the council—and connecting with community groups. My personal opinion is that that has not worked wonderfully well, and a lot more work needs to be done by individual councillors, assisted by the councils, to understand that things have to change and that councils have to be representative of the area.

I am concerned that in London we have all-out elections every four years. In the London borough of Harrow, regardless of the results of the election, we are expecting a huge turnover of councillors. More than 50% of councillors will be new, which creates a political vacuum and an opportunity to train people in the right sort of way that encourages them to be councillors in the right sort of vein.

It is incumbent on local authorities to have a proper training programme for those councillors now so that it is ready to go when people are elected. From my experience across London authorities, I am not convinced that a proper induction programme is prepared for such councillors. That needs to change. Without doubt, without such a change discontent will continue to build up, with people saying, “It isn’t worth being a councillor, so I am going to give up.”

[Mr Joe Benton in the Chair]

I have one last challenge, which is not in our report. Given the changes that have been made to the roles of executive councillors, who make decisions, and councillors on the front line, who represent their wards, we should perhaps reduce the number of councillors overall, rather than having large numbers of councillors and large councils right across unitary and all sorts of other authorities. We should pay councillors better, reward them appropriately and give them the support they need, but we should reduce their numbers, because if we make them more professional, more involved and more effective, we will need fewer of them. That might be controversial, and some people may not agree, but local authorities all over the country are starting to reduce marginally the number of their councillors. However, a marginal, creeping approach is perhaps not sufficient, and we may need radical action to introduce such a change.

Mrs Brooke—sorry, Mr Benton; the Chairman has changed during my speech.

[Robert Neill]

That is the effect you have.

[Bob Blackman]

Yes, I know. Mrs Brooke is gone—she could not stand it any longer.

In summary, Mr Benton, this is an excellent report. The Select Committee has put in an awful lot of work and collected an awful lot of evidence, so the report is worthy of lots of action. There is further work to be done: we have to transform local government so that it is, in the right way, at the forefront of decision making. The report is a welcome step, but it is not the end of that transformation; it is more like the end of the beginning.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Bob Blackman

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I accept the basis on which he does so. Equally, however, there is no doubt a great deal set out in the consultation. I very much hope that the consultation contains some constructive proposals on how we might make an article 4 system work more effectively in practice. I understand his point, but the details are particularly indicative and speculative in these cases because, in general, the Government have rightly taken a policy of not seeking to intervene in local authority applications for article 4 directions, which is a genuinely localist stance. We have in fact made the position more localist by requiring only notification of the article 4 direction, rather than approval by the Secretary of State—a general move back towards localism, which the previous Government never did. That is why I think that, rather than thinking about the indicative costs, we should look at finding a constructive means whereby local authorities have the confidence to use article 4 directions, knowing that they will work and will not create a disproportionate burden.

[Bob Blackman]

My hon. Friend has vast experience in local government and in planning law. Does he agree that one of the reasons for the impetus behind the campaign to allow local authorities to opt out is the Government’s proposal to double the amount of permitted development that will be allowed? In some parts of the country it will work, but in others it will not. That is the concern of local authorities, MPs and councillors.

[Robert Neill]

I understand my hon. Friend’s genuine concerns—I do not doubt the good faith with which they are raised—but, equally, I hope he accepts that my problem with the Lords amendment is that it would import a blanket approach to something that has always been adjusted nationally, although however much it should or should not be is a matter for debate. If we are going to change that, we ought to give it rather more consideration.

My other difficulty with the Lords amendment is that it would make a very significant shift in policy by adopting that blanket opt-out approach, without any consideration of that in the consultation. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s stance will enable that to take place.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and Bob Blackman

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

Absolutely not, and to see that the hon. Gentleman has only to think about two things, the first of which is planning policy. Any planning application has to be in accord with the planning policies that are set out—both in the local plan and in our new national planning policy framework—which give protection against ideas such as he mentions. Secondly, we cannot create a market and demand where there is none, although perhaps he does not get that fact, and so neither of the things he mentions would occur. Our approach enables and incentivises local authorities to work much more closely with their business communities on an ongoing basis.

It is very surprising to hear such a degree of criticism from Labour Members, because they need only look at what is done in most of the United Kingdom’s competitor countries to see that, in general, a closer alignment of local funding mechanisms with local business growth advantages the local economy. That is a basic proposition and they just do not seem to want to take it on board.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Unfortunately, this debate seems to have got muddled and become a discussion of two lots of dates. One relates to the retention of business rates, a move which I wholeheartedly support; I believe that we should get on with it as fast as we can. However, we also need to address the issue raised by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) about the implementation of systems to provide council tax benefit. Hon. Members from all parts of the House, and those in local government, have genuine concerns about that implementation and about the ability of local authorities to develop the systems to provide the localisation of council tax benefit. Will the Minister give an answer on that issue?

[Robert Neill]

I shall deal with both those points and give a little detail as to why the suggestion that we are rushing is not well-founded. It is worth remembering that the Government consulted widely on this proposal, and let me deal first with the point about business rate retention.

Last year, we set out a detailed consultation document outlining our proposals, and the local government information unit has recognised that we have amended a number of our proposals on tariffs, set-asides and top-ups to reflect those matters. We issued eight highly detailed technical papers, to which we received some 461 substantial responses. The idea that there has not been very full engagement with the local government sector simply does not hold water. Indeed, there have been collaborations and discussions between officials of my Department and the local authority organisations throughout the process. To deal with the design of the systems and the regulations that go with them we have set up an official-level working group, which includes representatives of the Department, the Local Government Association, the Society of District Council Treasurers, the Society of County Treasurers and the other financial bodies—so the point is specifically being worked on. The timetable is challenging, but the ability to return a proportion of the business rates to local government is a really important tool, not only to give local authorities greater resilience in their funding streams, but for ensuring national growth.

Firefighters (Industrial Action)

Debate between Robert Neill and Bob Blackman

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support and for those observations and I am sure that everyone will welcome the condemnation implicit in his statements of some of the behaviour that we saw. He is right to say that there is scope to decide when a strike takes place and choosing 5 November was especially inappropriate in the circumstances. I hope that his condemnation of that decision will extend to a condemnation of the intimidation of those people who sought to provide cover in London on Saturday.

I have made it clear from the beginning that I hope that this will be settled by negotiation because it is best dealt with at a local level. I do not believe that Ministers intervening in the detail of that negotiation would be appropriate, but we have made it clear that our officials are in contact with the parties. The chief fire and rescue adviser has kept me apprised of all the developments throughout the recent deterioration in the circumstances and will continue to do so. Of course, he continues to receive information from all the interested parties.

Things need not happen this way, and I take it from the hon. Gentleman’s words that the Opposition do not wish things to happen this way. I hope that we can say that both sides of the House conclude that this is not a mature way to deal with a dispute that involves a critical service. I hope that we can achieve a resolution and, above all, I hope that we will not see Londoners put at risk on an especially high-risk day. That would be a regrettable bit of brinkmanship, and that is why I have used the strong language that I have—it reflects the views of the public on the way in which they have been used in this matter.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Voters in my constituency are looking forward to celebrating Diwali and Guy Fawkes night on 5 November. Does my hon. Friend agree that five years is long enough to negotiate shift roster patterns? Is it not time that we considered reviewing whether no-strike arrangements should be introduced for the fire service nationally?

[Robert Neill]

Having said to the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) that I do not think that it is appropriate for the Government to be involved in the detailed negotiations, which are best dealt with between the employers and employees, I shall not respond any differently to my hon. Friend. However, I understand the point that he makes, and it is worth reminding people that this is not something that has happened out of the blue. There has been a long build-up to this and there is a sense of frustration. I do not think that the Government have any plans to change the overall framework of industrial relations, but I want to ensure that we encourage the parties concerned to reach a resolution. My priority is to ensure that appropriate contingency arrangements are in place to keep Londoners safe in the event of this happening—and I am sure that that is the case. We must also ensure that we review those contingency arrangements and keep them up to date across the country as a whole.