Updated 27 March 2025

EMAG exists to campaign for full government compensation. Will members of EMAG please note that because of pressure of work we regret it is not possible to answer individual written enquiries.

How would you feel if your pension was lost because of others' failures?

EMAG calls on Chancellor to settle the government's unpaid debt to Equitable Life victims

The Government's announcement of £11.8bn compensation for victims of the contaminated blood scandal is very welcome, if long overdue. It is also right that the Government has allocated £1.8bn in funds to rectify the injustice to the sub-postmasters in the Horizon IT scandal.

EMAG is calling on the government to pay the victims of the Equitable Life scandal the £2.6bn unpaid balance of compensation they are still owed following the maladministration identified by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

EMAG believes that where the state accepts responsibility for a failure it should provide proper financial redress.

EMAG representatives at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool

Treasury set to pocket c. £180m of compensation owed to policyholders

As a result of a series of Freedom of Information Requests, EMAG has established that at least £177m of the £1.5bn is set to be kept in the Treasury's pockets.

The underspend is accounted for as follows:

of the annual top-up payments to With-Profits Annuitants (WPAs) - forecast to cost £618m at 2011 values - £46m less than budgeted for was spent up to 2022.
the Government kept back a £100m contingency claiming that it was needed in case WPAs lived longer than expected, but with WPA annual payments running 8% less than forecast each year, it is extremely unlikely it will be needed.
the rest - £782m – was left to share amongst other policyholders, but £31m is unspent, largely because of the Government's failure to trace thousands of policyholders.

Paul Weir at the 'Enough is Enough March for Justice'

EMAG Chair Paul Weir speaking outside the Treasury

Draft legislation

Having discovered that the Treasury is set to keep around £180 million of the already severely reduced £1.5bn of compensation announced in 2010, EMAG has drafted a Bill which would require the Treasury to ensure that the full value of compensation announced in 2010 reaches policyholders. In doing so it would prioritise the most elderly and vulnerable pensioners.

EMAG believes that the Treasury trying to keep over 10% of the already inadequate compensation pot would be a further slap in the face for those who worked so hard to save for their retirement and who relied on the regulators to do their jobs.

It would add insult to injury considering the Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled that regulators comprehensively failed to implement the system that Parliament had legislated for, leading to a loss of £4.1bn for one million people.

EMAG's campaign objectives

EMAG will campaign until fair compensation is awarded to the million victims of the Equitable Life scandal.

For the majority 945,000 victims

95% of Equitable's with profits policyholders have received just 22% of the Treasury's calculation of their ‘relative losses’ without any interest paid from 2009 onwards.

With the economy at last recovering, we are campaigning for a commitment that victims will receive the missing 78% of their compensation entitlement.

For the pre–1992 WP Annuitants

We are campaigning to get MPs to insist that the 10,000 pre–September 1992 WP Annuitants are compensated on exactly the same terms as those who took their WP Annuity after that date. We view the current flat rate £5,000 as a welcome down–payment.

For the post–1992 Annuitants

For the 37,000 WP Annuitants who are receiving an alleged ‘100% of their relative losses’ we are seeking dialogue with The Prudential to see why annuity payments continue to fall every year.