Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

I must declare an interest in that I have a very small Equitable Life policy—so small that I do not think I will qualify for any repayment. My concern is for the large number of my constituents whose entire retirement is dependent on Equitable Life policies. The list of the people who write to me includes many of those who have contributed most to the community over the years: that is a striking feature of the names that I see in the correspondence. Many of them will still be angry at how little they are going to get for all the savings they put by. The first thing to remember is that the primary responsibility for this situation rests with the utterly irresponsible management of Equitable Life. In many ways, that was a disgrace to the mutual movement. It underlines a weakness in the mutual movement, of which I am very supportive in general, which is that executives who want to advance their own careers favour the acquiring of new members at the expense of the interests of existing members. It happened at Equitable Life, it happened at Northern Rock, and it happens in building societies; it is something that the mutual movement has to watch very carefully. The regulatory failure that occurred is the basis of the Bill, which I hope we shall give a Third Reading. That regulatory failure has not led to action within anything like the time scale that it should have done. A decade has gone by: people have got older and people have died while action should have been taken. I very much welcome the action that the Government have taken, very quickly, within a short time of their coming into office. I welcome the further announcements that the Minister has made in saying that there will be no tax liability and no effect on tax credits, and that special considerable will be given to the social care situation, bearing in mind that quite a lot of Equitable Life policyholders are now in social care, either at home or in residential care, and their cases need to be considered very carefully. I am grateful to the ombudsman for the work that she has put into this matter, and for her persistence in doing so, and to EMAG, which has done such a tremendous job. This is not full redress even for all the regulatory failure that occurred, and I would not expect policyholders to be satisfied that they have got all that they are morally entitled to. However, the fact that the Government have moved quickly to ensure that payments will be made makes me feel entirely justified in going into the Lobby in support of the Bill. I am rather depressed that the response of Labour Front Benchers has been to say to the Government, ““You gave people the impression that they might get more, and even though you're giving three times more than Labour would even have contemplated, we, the Labour party, did not promise anything at all.”” We had to act, and I am grateful for the fact that Ministers are doing so.