21st May 2002 - Minutes of committee meeting

Held at: RAC, Pall Mall, London
Present: Paul Braithwaite, Alex Henney, Tom Lake, Colin Slater, Rodney Allen, Betty McCann (Committee), Jeremy Lever (Members) Apologies: None

Minutes: The Minutes of the meeting held on 9th April 2002 were approved.

Report on Meeting of All Action Groups with Board on 11th April 2002.
AH and CS attended for EMAG. ELMHG, EPHAG, GAR, were also present. Only Treves, Thomson and Bellringer attended for Equitable, despite the fact that the proposal from action groups wanted a meeting with the whole board.

ELJAG was dis-invited by Equitable, CS protested. Ron Bullen defended the move.

The agenda was high-jacked by Treves for a partial presentation of the material the board intended publishing on 15th April.

On the question of suing the regulator - Treves said Equitable would wait for the Penrose report, claiming that the Society did not have access to Civil Service files.

Discussion:
Do the cases against former directors inhibit Penrose in collecting evidence from these persons?

Although Equitable had been advised to put in precautionary claims against the former directors early in Treves' tenure, this had not been done and insurance may well have lapsed. The claims appear to be mostly public relations - Peter Martin and Jenny Page are expected
to represent themselves.

Action:
Appeal to go out for someone to study the Equitable's statement of claims against Ranson, Sclater and Ernst & Young and summarise information therein.

Prof Blake's second report had been well-received and the proposals to change the basis of the fund should now be followed up vigorously.

In respect of the Compromise Scheme members did not know that there was virtually no fund for future appropriations, were not told that the proportion of GIRs was so large, and that other mis-selling claims unrelated to the GAR issue were plausible and amounted to a significant sum of money.

Recruitment campaign:
Results are very positive with EMAG's numbers increasing many-fold. The committee proposed a very heartfelt vote of thanks to Colin Slater who had worked very hard and long to achieve this.

Put a message `Welcome to new members' on web site.

The strength of the response allows us to obtain an opinion of the case against the regulators and to press it strongly, and also to commission a firm of lobbyists.

Annuitant Initiatives:
We have appealed for people's information and Vincent Nolan has agreed to analyse annuity changes to extract the method of calculation begin used by the company - which is currently obscure.

Company Limited by Guarantee:
This will be discussed at the AGM. To buy a shell company is cheap - then the memoranda must be customised. Andrew Pike will be asked what this might cost.

ELAS AGM and questions:
Committee agrees for PB to write to the Society and request a more reasonable procedure for questions at the AGM. Speeches should be limited and questions not answered at AGM should be answered by the web site.

Possible questions were discussed.

Capturing Web Site Visitors

On a voluntary basis? Co-option of Leslie Seymour to Committee.

Agreed

Regards,

Alex Henney