Ukip's Nigel Farage backs Equitable Life protesters

The campaign of nearly one million Equitable Life policyholders left billions out of pocket has won the backing of Ukip leader Nigel Farage a day before a rally led by former Bond girl Honor Blackman.

The current Government has set aside only £1.5 billion to compensate policyholders who suffered losses after the world’s oldest life assurer nearly collapsed in 2000.

Many policyholders lost swaths of their life savings because Equitable Life had vowed to pay unrealistic annuity rates, and regulators were found to have failed in their duties.

The policyholders are actually owed £4.3 billion and the Equitable Members Action Group is pushing for the 945,000 victims of the scandal to receive what amounts to 78% of missing compensation now that the economy is recovering.

In a letter seen by the Standard, Farage said: “We will certainly back your campaign for compensation and find, yet again, that… successive governments have been complicit in trying to dupe the man in the street into being given a fraction of what he is owed.”

Separately, Douglas Carswell, who recently won Ukip’s sole Commons seat in Clacton, Essex, said in a letter to a constituent that “what the government said they would do and what they have done are not the same thing”. Carswell sent this letter two days before he announced his defection from the Conservative party, prompting a by-election.

An action group spokesman said Ukip’s support will “increase pressure” on Labour, who he said have been “rather quiet” on the issue and the Tories, whom he warned to “be quite careful about alienating a million core voters and their families”.

Tomorrow’s demonstration will include speeches from Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron, who has backed the campaign, and Blackman, who has previously complained that half her pension “went down the drain” as a result of Equitable’s failures.