EMAG

The independent action group for current and ex Equitable Life policyholders, funded by contributions.

Equitable Members Action Group

Equitable Members Action Group Limited, a company limited by guarantee, number 5471535 registered in the UK

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Correspondence: 31/10/2002 - Letter from the Secretary of the Equitable Life Inquiry - Re meeting with Lord Penrose, about the role of the Inquiry

31 October '02 - Letter from the Secretary of the Equitable Life Inquiry

Dear Mr Henney,

MEETING WITH LORD PENROSE, 23 OCTOBER 2002

Thank you for coming in to see Lord Penrose yesterday with Paul Braithwaite, Colin Slater and Leslie Seymour. I hope you all found the meeting useful. You are welcome to pass on the text of this letter.

2. I opened the meeting with some remarks about the Inquiry, and I hope you don’t mind if I set out the points briefly again. I will also pick up some other points that came up during the discussion, including the ways in which we thought that the action group and your members might be able to assist Lord Penrose further.

3. First the nature of the Inquiry. The Inquiry is not here to write a history book. Lord Penrose has been asked to provide an authoritative account of how the problems with Equitable as at 31 August 2001 came about. We are tackling this very broad remit in a systematic and open-minded way, avoiding making unnecessary or unwarranted assumptions. We fully recognise that the time taken to identify, obtain and analyse the relevant documentary material has been a matter of frustration to policyholders past and present, who are understandably keen to see an early account from this Inquiry. But the time and care we have been taking is necessary to ensure that the account that is rendered is full and authoritative, and the judgements well founded.

4. We reject the suggestion that the Inquiry is not independent, or that its remit is toothless. The remit was deliberately left as open as it was to ensure that Lord Penrose could approach his task with an open mind. He has made clear that it is not his role to compete with the proper jurisdiction of the courts by seeking to determine liability between the parties, but that does not mean that he will not be providing a full account of what went wrong, identifying deficiencies in framework or practice, drawing lessons and making recommendations. He is not constrained from making adverse findings about any body or individual involved in these events.

5. There has been some comment about the make-up of the inquiry team, and my own background in particular. There are 3 points to make in this respect:

i. it is the independence of Lord Penrose as a senior judge and the rigour of his approach that ensures the independence and rigour of the Inquiry;
ii. as a professional public servant I am clearly responsible, as is any other public servant seconded to this Inquiry, for ensuring that I support Lord Penrose fully and effectively in fulfilling his remit; and
iii. the team has been recruited from a variety of sources, from within and outside Government, in order to ensure that Lord Penrose is supported by staff with the skills and experiences needed for the job.

6. We also discussed the position on publication. The remit of the Inquiry is to report to Ministers, not to publish its own findings. The Inquiry has been established in a way that enables it to receive information covered by the statutory confidentiality regimes, which are ultimately governed by EU law. These regimes do not enable the Inquiry to publish such information, so to the extent that the report includes information covered by the statutory restrictions, as it is bound to, the Inquiry could not publish it.

7. It follows the decision on publication is properly a matter for Treasury Ministers. When the inquiry was established the Treasury released a press release (reproduced on the Inquiry website) that stated that the results of the Inquiry would be published so far as possible, subject to legal and commercial confidentiality issues. The Inquiry is therefore operating on the basis that any information we do include in the report is likely to be published. Thus, for example, we may need to seek additional waivers from any policyholders whose confidential information we might wish to include in the final report.

Further assistance to the Inquiry

8. Lord Penrose explained that we might wish to ask whether your members are able to fill any particular gaps in the documents that we have. But we will return to this later. In the meantime we would be grateful if you could arrange for half a dozen or so of your members to supply him with analyses of the progressive financial impact on particular policyholders.
Yours sincerely


Hugh Burns
Secretary to the Inquiry