INQUIRY INTO LLOYD'S INSURANCE MARKET

EDM number 55 in 1992-93, proposed by Peter Hain on 13/05/1992.

That this House, noting that some 60 of its honourable Members, including Government Ministers, are names in the Lloyd's insurance market which has suffered widespread financial mismanagement, calls on the Government to establish an urgent public inquiry, focusing particularly on (a) fraudulent insider dealing whereby insider names have dumped loss-making activity and underwriting on outside names, whilst maintaining profitable business for themselves, (b) moves to bail out external names who are honourable Members of this House who face huge losses or bankruptcy, following recent discussions between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Council of Lloyd's, whilst other external names continue to bear these losses, (c) the distorting and corrupt impact of freemasonry within Lloyd's and (d) the extent to which the names who have made massive profits over the years under Lloyd's unique system of investment are now being given preferential assistance to escape from the loss-making years of 1988, 1989 and 1990, whilst ordinary citizens who have suffered financially from City scandals such as Maxwell pensions, Blue Arrow and Barlow Clowes, or the impact of the general recession, attract no such relief or sympathy from Government or the City; and believes that the current internal inquiry is not sufficiently independent or public, especially in the light of the role Lloyd's has played in the international insurance market as an important source of foreign earnings for the United Kingdom economy, and the need for speedy modernisation of its structure including an option for corporate membership, and genuinely independent and publicly accountable regulation to replace the present anachronistic and self-regulating structure.

This motion has been signed by a total of 35 MPs.