We are restructuring Emag to assist local groups who will be visiting their MPs to express their anger and to ensure that they do not think the 'Equitable problem? is dealt with. Our members will be relentless in pressing for the compensation they deserve. The Government has made a big mistake and we will haunt MPs until they put this grave injustice right.
We are also demanding that the Government urgently reconsider its decision to exclude an estimated 10,000 with-profits annuitants who had the misfortune to take their pension between 1987 and 1992. It is shameful that these pensioners have been excluded from receiving anything at all. By definition these people are likely to be even older and more frail than the post-1992 with-profits annuitants that the Government said were the most deserving of 100pc compensation.
The Government claims that they have made excessive gains and should not be compensated at all. But Emag has obtained the pension income figures for a number of these annuitants ? for policies started both before and after the cut-off date of September 1 1992.
This data shows a remarkable consistency between the losses of both groups. Typically their annual pensions continued paying out roughly the same amount until 2003 when they started to plummet thanks to falling bonus rates. By 2011 most of these annuitants have seen their pension income slashed by around 60pc. And it is still going down, every year.
Since compensation for other annuitants is designed to offset any gains against losses, we would argue that if what the Treasury claims about excessive gains is true then there would be no cost incurred by including the pre-1992 annuitants in the same scheme on the same basis. If they really have lost nothing, then no compensation would be due.
However, if, as Emag claims, they did lose, then the Government would have to find more money to put matters right.
Time is short ? the average age of these annuitants is 85 and many may not live to see any compensation unless the Government acts this year. We estimate the cost at about �150m, or �50m a year for the next three years. This contrasts with the �620m promised to the 37,000 people who took out a with-profits annuity after 1992.
A caring, compassionate government would ignore the technicalities and make ex-gratia payments available to these annuitants now, on the same basis of calculation as that applied to those whose policies started after 1992.
We call on the Government to honour the spirit of its election pledge to Equitable Life victims and to right this disgraceful wrong immediately.
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