Correspondence: 23/04/2004 - EMAG to the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee
23 April '04 - EMAG to the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee
Mr. John McFall
Chairman
Treasury Select Committee
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38 Swains Lane
London N6 6QR.
T: 020 7284 4217
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Dear Mr. McFall,
I received a disappointing letter form the clerk of the Committee dated 21 April stating that "The Committee for the present at least…has no plans to undertake further work on issues relating to Equitable specifically".
Over the last couple of years the Committee has undertaken significant studies of several financial disgraces - credit cards, split capital trusts, and endowment mortgages. These reports have been effective in generating constructive change. It has, however, taken virtually no interest in the largest disgrace of them all, the collapse of the Equitable.
As you are aware about a million people have lost money in the Equitable. The report on "The Regulation of Equitable Life" by the Parliamentary Ombudsman was a superficial whitewash. Despite the overwhelming evidence in Penrose of regulatory failure by the government, the government is unwilling to consider compensation (and is in part hiding behind the Parliamentary Ombudsman's report). Consequently those who have lost must look to Parliament for redress. I suggest the Committee should be a focus for considering the issue, both of what happened in the period covered by Penrose's report but also subsequently. As I made clear in my submission to you in February, many past and present members of the Society are being stitched up legal sleight of hand.
I copy this letter to the members of the Committee and to members of EMAG.
Yours sincerely,
ALEX HENNEY
Chairman of EMAG
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