Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill

We have to remember that we are dealing with a large number of people. It is not just one company with 50 or 60 people who are victims; there are thousands of victims that we know of and probably many more than we do not know of, and the amounts of money that they have lost individually are life-changing for them. Someone who has worked for 20 years on a Member of Parliament’s salary probably has £20,000 or £30,000 they can afford to lose; these people did not. The amounts they have lost individually are significant; the amount that has been stolen collectively, as I said, is almost certainly over £1 billion. If people stole £1 billion out of a bank vault, law enforcement would not stop until every last one of them was behind bars for a very long time, and would, if need be, change the rules to make sure that it could not happen again. We should regard the theft of £1 billion out of people’s pension funds just as seriously as the theft of £1 billion of gold bullion out of the back of a Securicor van. All this amendment asks is that the Government recognise that as an issue and start to put answers in place as to how they can protect our constituents from falling victim to these scams in future.