MPs will tomorrow call on the government to pay the “unpaid debt” due to victims of the Equitable Life scandal.
Equitable Members Action Group, the 15-year-old campaign group with 20,000 members, says the three-hour debate will enable Parliament to revisit the issue of compensation for 892,000 investors and a thinning group of 9,000 pensioners, all now over 88, receiving annuities.
The last government offered the latter a £5000 gratuity to compensate for being excluded from the £1.5billion payment scheme, which paid out only 22 per cent of their acknowledged losses to most investors, and which closed on December 31.
Paul Weir, Emag spokesman, said: “We want the same treatment that savers and pensioners got when RBS, HBOS, Bradford and & Bingley and Northern Rock were in trouble. We just want our own money back.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here