Equitable Life — House of Commons, 2019-01-31
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Gordon Marsden (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a point of which everybody in the House will be cognisant. It is important to recognise the people who, totally off their own bat, giving their time and, in some cases, at their own expense, have taken this process forward I am not going to repeat the sorry history of the comings and goings and everything else. It is true that the coalition Government did accept the ombudsman’s report, but neither they, nor their successors, including the current Government, have complied properly or fully with the ombudsman’s judgment. I have been in this place for a long time, under Governments of all persuasions, and one develops a certain amount of cynicism as to when the shredder comes out. It is really important that the Minister guarantees today, in plain English, that the Government and their relevant agencies will retain the necessary data indefinitely. I would not like people to come back to the House in three or four years’ time only to be told, "I’m terribly sorry, we thought we had the data but somehow it got shredded." The Government have sold their interest in Lloyds and are reducing their stake in RBS, as we have heard. It would be fitting to use a small portion of the money recouped finally to settle the acknowledged debt to Equitable Life victims. From what we have heard today, it is absolutely clear to me that we need to deal with the people in an annuity situation. It is important that the Treasury does not leave money in its back pocket. It has great form in this area: I know from my Front-Bench role about the advanced learning loan money, only half of which has been spent by the Department for Education, with the other half now sitting in the Treasury’s back pocket, to use the expression we heard earlier. One wonders what "affordability" means, and whether it is simply a case of the Government waiting for many of the people affected to become too enfeebled or no longer able to press their views. This issue is not only terrible morally, but foolish practically, because of the negative vibes it sends out Let me give the House an anecdote from many years ago, when I worked as a public affairs consultant for a number of clients. As part of the process, we very often employed self-employed people—perhaps journalists doing a public awareness campaign—or small businesses. I was relatively young at the time, so it took quite a bit of pluck to go and talk to our director of finance, but I had a distinguished medical journalist who had not been paid for ages for doing these public things for my clients. I went along and explained the situation, and I was told, "Well, we pay large businesses within around 30 to 40 days, we pay smaller suppliers within 60 to 90 days, and we pay self-employed people when we feel like it." I am not casting aspersions on any particular Minister, but for many of the people affected by this, it must feel like that is the case now I concur absolutely with the three demands made by the hon. Member for Harrow East at the beginning. Pensioner poverty is a key issue for so many of my constituents in Blackpool South, for a whole range of reasons, and for those in many other parts of the country, too. If we make progress in this area, those people will at least receive some of that safety net comfort that they should have had a long time ago.