The Equitable Life Assurance Society - Government Response and The Parliamentary Ombudsman

Government Response and The Parliamentary Ombudsman

In July 2008, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman completed a 4 year investigation, described by Equitable's chief executive as the "best chance of compensation". Her 2,819-page report accused the regulators, i.e. the DTI, GAD, and FSA of "comprehensive failure", found the Government guilty of ten counts of maladminstration and called for a compensation scheme "to put those people who have suffered a relative loss back into the position that they would have been in, had maladministration not occurred". Equitable’s chairman estimated that 30,000 policy holders had already died without compensation. In December, the European Parliament issued a press release describing the regulatory failure as an outrage.

In January 2009 the Government issued their response and appointed retired judge Sir John Chadwick as an independent advisor to design an ex-gratia scheme for some policyholders.
The PO accused the government of twisting the findings of her report by suggesting that whatever the regulators had done, it would have made no difference to the events which followed. She also said it had failed to give "cogent reasons" for rejecting some of her findings, mandatory since the Pensions Action Group Judicial Review. In March, the Public Administration Select Committee issued a second report in which it described the government response as "morally unacceptable", and repeated the PO's criticism that it had acted as judge on its own behalf. In May, the PO issued a supplementary report to the government's reply.

In August 2009 Sir John Chadwick issued an interim report. Sir John is designing a scheme to help the “hardest hit” by measuring the losses suffered in agreed cases of maladministration with those of a comparable company.