In January 2009, the Labour government rejected the Parliamentary Ombudsman's key recommendations on compensation for Equitable Life policyholders. EMAG, the policyholders' campaign group, retained Bell Pottinger Public Affairs to advise on its political campaign to change policy. This ran in tandem with a successful Judicial Review challenge.

BPPA worked with EMAG on a co-ordinated mass-member political campaign, on getting the message across nationally and, with a general election on the horizon, on working across parties. 351 MPs supported an Early Day Motion on the issue (by far the most popular EDM in the parliamentary session - over half of all MPs).

As the election grew closer, more than 1,100 pledges of support for proper compensation were gained from parliamentary candidates from the three main parties. This resulted in 379 current MPs having personally signed EMAG's pledge. And when the Coalition's Programme for Government was created, it included a promise of swift, fair and transparent compensation.

£1.5 billion of compensation was announced in the October 2010 Spending Review. After an intense period of political lobbying through the summer of 2010 George Osborne agreed to ditch the previous Labour government's methodology of relying on retired Appeal Court Judge, Sir John Chadwick, who had proposed compensation at £340m.

EMAG's fight for increasing the amount of compensation and for the inclusion of 10,000 of the oldest annuitants currently excluded from the scheme continues, as does our advice to them.