Ms Alison Burns:

I will make one or two comments first and then my colleague, Mr. Armstrong, will add to our responses.

There has been a valid question raised, which is the piece about attracting younger people into the market and how one would do so. One would do it by product design, disease management and innovation. For example, at Aviva, we have introduced a new back-up service to help people manage bad backs. There would be a good example of trying to help reduce claims cost.

There should be no levy increase. It has been firmly established today that unless we change something, we should expect nothing other than what we have had previously. While lifetime community rating is a big challenge, and we accept that if we move to UHI, a question arises which, if one wanted to solve it today, lifetime community rating would create that environment.

In terms of the comments about smokers and overweight persons, this fascinates me. In other markets in which Aviva works, for example, a customer can tell Aviva his or her weight and cholesterol level and confirm that he or she does not smoke, and then get a discount on his or her premium because he or she is less likely to claim. If we were to introduce that under the Bill, as currently drafted, we could technically be sent to prison. The Bill provides the opportunity for officers of insurers to go to prison if they do not comply with the Act, the principle of which is that we should not be seen to be distinguishing between the old and the young and the sick and the healthy. It is not that there are no ideas and innovation that we could bring to the market that could contribute, but that the way the Bill is drafted, it would be an adventurous individual who would enter into that space.

I echo Mr. Armstrong's comments on accelerated payments. We have agreed to accelerate payments to help fund the budget gap. We have been very flexible in responding to that. We are happy to provide support. We are paying the claims. As soon as the claim is in and it is validated, the money is coming out of our bank account and helping to fund the budget gap. I am not really sure, certainly from an Aviva perspective, where that sits.