billion claim against former directors, claiming that they failed in their duties to policyholders. This claim was abandoned in December 2005; the costs of the two cases amounted to around £40m. Government response and the Parliamentary Ombudsman, 2008–9 In July 2008, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman completed a four-year investigation, described by Equitable's chief executive as the "best chance of compensation". Her 2,819-page report accused the regulators, i.e. the DTI, GAD, and FSA, of "comprehensive failure", found the Government guilty of ten counts of maladministration, and called for a compensation scheme "to put those people who have suffered a relative loss back into the position that they would have been in, had maladministration not occurred". Equitable's chairman estimated that 30,000 policyholders had already died without receiving compensation. In December, the European Parliament issued a press release describing the regulatory failure as an outrage. In January 2009 the Government issued their response and appointed retired judge Sir John Chadwick as an independent advisor to design an ex-gratia scheme for some policyholders "who have suffered a disproportionate impact as a result of the relevant maladministration". The Ombudsman accused the government of twisting the findings of her report by suggesting that whatever the regulators had done, it would have made no difference to the events which followed. She also said it had failed to give "cogent reasons" for rejecting some of her findings, mandatory since the Pensions Action Group Judicial Review. In March, the Public Administration Select Committee issued a second report in which it described the government response as "morally unacceptable", and repeated the Ombudsman's criticism that it had acted as judge on its own behalf. In May, the Ombudsman issued a supplementary report to the government's reply. In August 2009, Chadwick issued an interim report. Government response, 2010 In the Queen's Speech following the formation of a Conservative-LibDem coalition government in 2010, the Equitable Life (Payments) Bill was announced. The bill sought to secure compensation for nearly a million policyholders (UK-wide) hit by the near-collapse of the insurer. The Government also announced that the final report from Sir John Chadwick in relation to Equitable Life would be received by mid-July. A statement on the HM Treasury website confirmed two elements of the design of the scheme: that there should be no means testing, and that the dependents of deceased policyholders should be included in the scheme. The July 2010 announcement