Wickham's musings from Chalke

Click on this link to see my Falklands Memoirs

The Hutton report into the death of Dr David Kelly is due to be issued next week. The Penrose report into the Equitable Life problems is undergoing scrutiny for legal clearance and will be made public (no doubt with parts censored) soon. The law suit concerning Railtrack's demise engineered by Byers has also started but won't reach court until near the next election.

A common factor in all these is the way politicians try everything to avoid telling the truth. President Clinton said categorically that he had never "had sex with that woman". I agree that sex should mean full penetration, what he did was sexual playing, but he never admitted that and just played with words. Tony Blair and his government have been doing a lot of that.

I had thought in the early days of his government that they had done most things right. They had got rid of the working class/union image and become middle of the road social democrats or left wing Tory, appealing to the vast middle class. A lot of that class are disgusted with his government now.

It has been shown that Tony Blair chaired a meeting at which the procedure for leaking David Kelly's name was discussed. It was agreed that his name would not be volunteered, but admitted if anyone asked correctly. So journalists just asked lots of names. One asked over twenty until he mentioned Kelly, which was immediately confirmed. Tony Blair may be technically correct that he did not authorise the leaking of David Kelly's name, but he has never admitted publicly that he agreed to confirmation if someone asked.

The government are trying hard to avoid any liability for the Equitable Life fiasco. The Parliamentary Ombudsman has said that the Financial Services Authority could only regulate life companies "with a light touch". Various departments are ignoring the fact that evidence of imprudent policies and misrepresentation by the Equitable Life board was deliberately ignored. I hope Penrose mentions this strongly although he has no brief to blame anyone.

In late 1998 the regulators allowed themselves to be brow-beaten by the board into doing nothing. That was just one occasion when they had facts showing the dire state of Equitable Life's finances. A hard line then would no doubt have brought Equitable Life to its knees, but there was more in the kitty then. An orderly exit for policyholders could have been arranged. In doing nothing and allowing the company to advertise more heavily and continue selling policies the regulators must have been hoping the company could trade its way into a better financial state. In the event there has been a collapse and several misrepresentations since.

The main misrepresentation being the "compromise agreement" which got rid of guaranteed annuities and took away policyholders' right to claim any sort of compensation. It has come to light that a huge black hole in the accounts was not made known, nor was the fact that policies with guaranteed interest (or bonus rates) of 3.5% would make a mockery of future policy growth. Some policies are having the 3.5% added to guaranteed fund values, others have it added to non-guaranteed fund values and see it taken back immediately by cuts in total policy values. This is fraud according to many and the government departments (Treasury, FSA, PO, SFO and others) continue to avoid the main issues.