MP Nia Griffith Demands Justice For Equitable Life Victims

Nia Griffith MP is working with like-minded MPs to pursue better compensation for Equitable Life savers.

Many people who saved with Equitable Life have only been able to recover around 20% of what is owed to them after the near-collapse of the life insurance giant some twenty years ago.

Victims of Equitable Life scandal are typically retired nurses, teachers, civil servants, shop workers and postal workers. They were deprived of savings after a decade of what the Parliamentary Ombudsman described as serious regulatory maladministration, for which they were only compensated with £1.5bn of the £4.3bn lost back in 2010.

The MPs campaigning for justice for Equitable Life victims lobbied the Treasury Minister John Glenn MP at a meeting in Parliament this week. They pressed home the need for a more generous compensation package and stressed that they would not drop this matter.

Nia Griffith MP explained:

“The Government has got to stop hiding behind the excuse of the state of public finances to deny justice for victims of the Equitable Life scandal.

“We are now ten years on from the banking crisis, and ten years on from the publication of the Ombudsman’s report which described the Equitable Life fiasco as a catastrophic failure of regulation and pointed the finger clearly at Government.

“I explained to the Treasury Minister the urgent need to sort out a much more realistic and generous compensation for these savers. It is high time that the Government gave proper recognition to the huge injustice done to people like my constituents – many on modest incomes – who were simply trying to plan and save responsibly for retirement.

“Many of those affected have reached an age where they could really do with this money, and getting back a mere 20% of what is rightfully theirs is simply not good enough. I and other MPs made it clear to the Minister that we are not going to let this drop and want him to come back to us with plans for a better compensation package.”