Ombudsman's report slams government departments

The Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has questioned whether she can continue in her post if measures to reduce problems in departmental record-keeping, and poor response times to her queries were not resolved.

Publishing her Annual Report for 2002-03, the Ombudsman, whose remit is to investigate complaints against government departments and other public bodies, said that her Office had dealt with 2,235 complaints, compared with 1,988 in the previous year.

But Ms Abraham felt that in a number of areas she could not fully investigate complaints due to administrative stumbling blocks and a failure within departments to cooperate promptly with her office.

She said: "In an attempt to resolve all this, I initiated discussions at the highest level with the Cabinet Office and the former Lord Chancellor's Department (now the Department for Constitutional Affairs).

"The resulting Memorandum of Understanding, which reminds departments how they should deal with code requests and the requirements of my Office once we begin an investigation, will, I hope, shortly be finalised and disseminated by the Cabinet Office to all the bodies within my jurisdiction.

"If this does not prevent a repetition of the problems we have been experiencing, I shall need to consider whether I can properly continue with this work."

Among the problems highlighted in the report was poor record-keeping by departments.

Ms Abraham said: "Not only does inadequate record keeping - or the inability of some departments to trace any or all of their papers - make it difficult to establish exactly what happened in relation to some complaints, but it also leads to difficulties in communication with members of the public, which gives rise to many of the complaints made to me."

Ms Abraham also criticised the length of time it took some departments to agree to implement her recommendations if she upheld the complaint – this was particularly so when financial redress was involved.

The Ombudsman said that chief culprit was the performance of parts of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - which accounted for a third of all the complaints made to her Office.

A significant number of complaints against Jobcentre Plus involved misleading or incorrect advice about benefit entitlement. Complaints against the Child Support Agency (CSA) included their failure to take effective action to enforce payment by non-resident parents and delays in making maintenance assessments.

(GMcG)