Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-034"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: none) |
|---|---|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking the rapporteur Mrs Wallis for her dedicated work on Equitable Life, all the members of the committee, who worked really well together and left politics outside the door – perhaps not all the time but most of the time – and particularly the Secretariat, who are with us today, for their diligence.
I took on chairing this committee 18 months ago. It was a great honour to take on that job and I think that by listening you learn a lot. I am glad to hear from the Commissioner this morning that we are learning from our mistakes. I acknowledge his comments that he does not contest the findings of this report and I also welcome his plans for the future in terms of better regulation and application of EU law.
However, there are over a million people who will hear about this debate and who are directly affected by it. The one thing you would have to say is that this debate, and our work, have brought the work of the European Union closer to the citizen, because we have in our midst two of the original petitioners – Paul Braithwaite and Tom Lake – who came to the Committee of Inquiry. I welcome there here today. They have stuck with it. I worry, if they had not done so, where would we be? I reckon we would still be rubber-stamping and ticking boxes and nothing would have changed. Therefore, even if we do not succeed in compensation – although I stress we will try – they have done a great service not just to their own case but also to the general regulation of financial services.
What are our conclusions after 18 months of work? Well, that the UK was flawed in its implementation of the Third Life Directive. Yes, it ticked the boxes, but its day-to-day application was deficient and inadequate. It failed on a number of different issues, including challenging the dual role of the appointed actuary, focusing too narrowly on solvency margins and other very important issues. The whole light-touch regulatory policy, the disproportionate deference to the Equitable management – all of this pointed to lack of control and regulation.
Too often, we discovered that the home and host state authorities were able to shift responsibility from one to another, leaving non-UK policyholders in a vacuum. For example, the inquiry concluded that both Irish and German regulators pursued an unjustifiably passive approach in respect to Equitable. I find it particularly regrettable, as an Irish MEP, that no Irish authority assumes responsibility for the inadequate actions undertaken by the Irish regulator in relation to Equitable Life prior to 2003.
Then, when we look at redress mechanisms, when things went wrong, we discovered a pattern of confusion and much inequality of treatment, as already dealt with by my colleagues.
So, I turn to our recommendations. We never misled our petitioners and those who came to the committee and who listened to our work. We never promised compensation, but we strongly believe that the UK Government is under an obligation to assume responsibility for this affair and we recommend that it compensate Equitable Life policyholders within the UK, Ireland, Germany and elsewhere. In addition, the UK must accept and implement any recommendations of the UK Parliamentary Ombudsman that she may make in her second report on Equitable, which is eagerly awaited.
We need to tighten up on many issues around regulation. However, there is a question that needs to be asked following this debacle: if the cross-border dimension of consumer protection is not properly taken into account, can we blame consumers in the EU for not shopping more across borders? As to the question put to our rapporteur by a journalist of whether we would buy these products across borders, the answer is still not particularly clear.
We have the recommendations in front of us; we have this major report of almost 400 pages; the Commissioner is to take it on board and I appreciate that. I would ask this House to support this report and the recommendations fully and I thank you for your attention."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070619.5.2-034"2
|
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples