Treasury and Work and Pensions

People want to know how this could happen and what we are going to do about it. I have a letter from a woman in my constituency who says that she is extremely pleased to hear what all of us are doing about Farepak. Like other hon. Members, I am trying to do some things locally as well as encouraging people to contribute to the national campaign. She writes:"““Since my last email to you, we have had very bad luck. My husband took action to salvage a small amount of money so that our three children aged one, eight and nine could at least have ""some presents. He worked day shifts and night sifts and even call-outs but sadly on Sunday 5 November he had an accident at work and was taken to hospital, where they attempted to save his finger. As you can see, he is unable to go back to work. I am now totally devastated and really have no choice but to tell my children that Christmas will have to be cancelled this year. I hope that the Farepak bosses and HBOS can sleep at night because I know I can’t with worry.””" The point of mentioning that is not that it is a case of individual hardship; there are thousands of such cases and thousands of families in this position. What they want to know is how a company could behave in that way. How could a company continue to take in money, knowing that it was going to go somewhere else? How could a bank have withdrawn support, knowing what the consequences would be? We have discovered in the past few days that a firm of administrators set up a premium rate telephone line so that it will make some money out of the people who phone up to find out what has happened to their money. How can that be? I am not surprised that some people are saying that the Farepak episode has given us a glimpse into the unsavoury face of corporate life. It has given us a glimpse into a trend whereby some people in our society behave in ways that enable them to get extremely rich, while many are desperately poor. The gap between those two groups is getting ever greater. A disconnection, which is not only financial but moral, is setting in between a world of mega-greed, about which we seem to say little on occasions such as this, and a world of desperate poverty. The Farepak episode has drawn back the veil, enabling us to glimpse what kind of world this is. The Government are rightly asked by people who have suffered as a result of the collapse of Farepak to do all that they can to remedy this market failure.