Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

No one is going to oppose the Bill's Third Reading, for the simple reason that, if it fell, no one would receive any money. None the less, dealing with the Bill has in many ways been a frustrating experience. It is a paving Bill, as others have said, and the big elephant in the room is the cap and its effect on the overall amount of money available. It would be churlish not to acknowledge that the Government have moved swiftly, and that is welcome. After 10 years spent arguing about the matter, we are finally getting somewhere with it, but to some extent the Bill is a missed opportunity, because of the cap and the inability to do anything about the Treasury's decision to introduce one. The effect will be dramatic. Nobody is arguing that, in the current situation, everybody should receive all the money to which they might be entitled. Even EMAG accepts that there will be, as the group put it, a ““haircut””, but some people will lose 80% of the compensation that they should have received, and that is not fair. There are other inequities involved. I was frankly baffled by the Minister's mental contortions over the exclusion of pre-1992 with-profits annuitants. As I understand his remarks, we are now in the position where maladministration is okay as long as one does not know about it and where it becomes an issue only when one does know about it. That seems utterly perverse. By resorting to these measures, the Government have undermined what could have been a very good end to this long-running matter. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is right—had the previous Labour Government grasped the nettle at an early stage, this issue could have been dealt with much more cheaply. A lot of the fault over the cost lies with the previous Government's unwillingness to do anything about it. Many of us have spent years in this House arguing that they should have done so; I have not changed my position over that period. I think that there should be compensation, and I welcome what has been done. It is not sufficient, however, and many policyholders will still feel very aggrieved, and rightly so. It could have been dealt with better had it been done differently, perhaps with a larger cap or payments over a longer period. I can give half a thanks for the Bill, but I think that the Government will face problems in future because of their failure fully to deal with the issue.