Petition 0611/2004
Nicolas Bellord appearing on behalf of the late Mr Arthur White.

Arthur White, the petitioner, died of stomach cancer on 12th July 2005. A week prior to his death, realising that he was in no state to come to this meeting he asked me to present his case. Mrs White and their son, Stephen White, as the executors of the petitioner have authorised that I should now appear and I do so as a friend of the petitioner, not as a lawyer, although I am a retired lawyer of some 50 years experience.

In his petition Mr White uses the word MALFEASANCE by the Regulators of the Equitable Life Assurance Society - the Regulators being H M Treasury and their delegates. There was undoubtedly NONFEASANCE - failure to act; the Parliamentary Ombudsman is looking into MALADMINISTRATION which might equate to MISFEASANCE. But this petition is concerned with MALFEASANCE which concerns illegal or unethical conduct by the Regulators.

Both Mr White and I believed that there was prima facie evidence of dishonesty in the conduct of the Society's affairs and we both voiced that view at the time of the Court Proceedings in early 2002. At the statutory meeting of creditors Mr White asked the Society to investigate dishonesty and for his request to be minuted. The Society not only refused to do so but failed to report his request to the Court. As recently as May of this year, when he was terminally ill, he repeated this request at the AGM but he was treated with ridicule and disorder.

We further believe that there is prima facie evidence of the Regulators, from about 1998, onwards colluding with the Society, in an unethical cover-up, of this dishonesty. The Regulators had made mistakes and omissions in regulating Equitable. Equitable was gradually removing itself from the oversight of the Regulators by moving from guaranteed to non-guaranteed bonuses. The Regulators could have prevented this by invoking the option in Article 17.1(D) of the Third Life Directive to require reserving for non-guaranteed bonuses or at the very least to require disclosure of the true position. They failed to do so and when the crisis developed they colluded in plans to deceive and bamboozle the policyholders both actual and potential. It is a long story.

One example of this was that those who had claims against the Society were encouraged to take their complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Many, myself included, did so, saying that the Society's true financial position had been misrepresented to them. Subsequently the Treasury asked Lord Penrose to inquire into the Society's downfall but not to apportion blame. In March 2004 his report appeared confirming the allegations we had made to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The Treasury Minister, when presenting his report to Parliament, said anyone who had a complaint could go to the FOS which many of us had already done.

One year later the FOS announced that any such complaints that relied on evidence set out in the Penrose report - Penrose Related Complaints - would be rejected. This is conduct that one might expect in Stalin's Russia or Mao's China but not in 21st century Europe.

I am have no time to argue here whether the European Union's Directives have been correctly implemented into UK law or whether if the implementation was defective it has now been corrected or not. That is irrelevant if, despite all the regulation in the world, the Regulators themselves are not honest, not truthful and do everything to bamboozle citizens who have justifiable complaints and that that is their continuing policy. That is what this petition means by Malfeasance and that is what I look to the European Parliament to act to correct.

It must be obvious that, for demographic reasons, the European Union has wide problems regarding pensions. Surely these problems must be approached ethically, transparently, honestly and realistically. The UK regulators record in this respect is lamentable and continues to be lamentable.

I might just mention that Lord Penrose passed his evidence to the SFO – the Serious Fraud Office – but after 20 months nothing has been heard from them.

13 September, 2005