Stinging attack on UK government for failure to respond to European Parliament's Equitable Life report

11.29.53am GMT Thu 24th Jan 2008

MEPs have made a scathing attack on the UK government's failure to respond to last summer's European Parliament report on the problems at the British life insurance company Equitable Life, which caused financial losses to over a million policyholders.

Speaking in the European Parliament's Petitions Committee, Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, who drafted the Parliament's report on Equitable Life, said it was "extraordinary" that "the British government has not even had the courtesy to acknowledge the existence of the report". By failing to respond to the report of Parliament's committee of inquiry, adopted in June 2007, the UK was in breach of the "duty of loyal cooperation" between the EU institutions and governments, she added.

"One would think the UK was not a member of the European Union", commented the former chair of the committee of inquiry into Equitable Life, Mairéad McGuiness MEP as she backed Diana Wallis' view that the government had failed in its duty of loyal cooperation.

(Photo: European Parliament)