Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

That is true, and the record of the outgoing Labour Government in that regard is inglorious, but I do not want to be partisan. In essence, Equitable Life policyholders do not want us endlessly to bash the Opposition; they want to know which way we can go forward. So I shall turn my remarks to the specific points made by the hon. Member for Leeds North East. He made a good moral case for not excluding people who ought properly to be included in the category to whom compensation could be paid, but, as I suggested in my intervention on him, some factors cause me some concern. First, the hon. Gentleman referred to the elderly pensioner who had put in £57,000 and now receives a very low monthly figure. I certainly share his concern about that, but, if we were to unpick financial arrangements going back to the 1980s, we would have to consider the difficulty that arose from the fact that Equitable Life gave guaranteed annuity rates to some of its policyholders and, at the same time, record bonus rates to those people who did not have those guarantees. In reality, Equitable Life was building its business on the basis of becoming a market leader in the bonuses that it granted—even to the point where the parliamentary authorities recommended that all hon. Members making additional voluntary contributions should make use of Equitable Life because of its market-leading rates. We know now that those rates were deceptive, but during the 1980s those rates were paid and those bonuses added to the asset pool being put together. Therefore, it cannot be gainsaid that, certainly by 1990, most people with an asset share in an Equitable Life policy probably had an amount that was well beyond what was appropriate for the investment that they had made. In other words, they were over-supplied with bonuses during that period.