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The Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, today published 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.

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 commented on the length of time it took some departments to respond to correspondence from her Office and, if she upheld the complaint, to agree to implement her recommendations. This was particularly so when financial redress was involved. The Ombudsman also received 42 complaints that information had been wrongly withheld under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.

Department for Work and Pensions
The Ombudsman said that the performance of parts of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - which account for a third of all the complaints made to her Office - had caused her particular concern. 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.

The Ombudsman had drawn her concerns to the Chief Executives at Jobcentre Plus and CSA and was pleased at their positive response. Ms Abraham also received complaints about misleading letters from The Pension Service about the amount of state earnings-related pension that would be payable to those who had an occupational or private pension. The Pension Service accepted that the letters could be misunderstood and undertook to write again to about 500,000 people.

Individual Learning Accounts
During the year the Ombudsman concluded investigations into the operation and, later, the closure of the Individual Learning Accounts Scheme run by the Department for Education and Skills. She reported to Parliament in April 2003 that she had found evidence of serious maladministration by the Department in setting up and managing the Scheme. She also found that the Department's private sector service provider, Capita Business Services Ltd, had failed to work effectively with the Department to make sure that there were sufficient safeguards in place to prevent improper access to the Scheme by unscrupulous learning providers. The Department agreed to reimburse students for the extra costs they incurred in order to complete their course after the Scheme was closed down by the Government. Some learning providers also received ex gratia payments and the reimbursement of costs from the Department for students who had been committed to follow courses with them but whose applications had not been processed before the Scheme was closed.

Criminal Records Bureau
The Ombudsman received 31 complaints about the Criminal Records Bureau. These mostly concerned delays in processing applications for vetting checks and the consequent lost opportunities for employment for complainants.

Code of Practice on Access to Government Information (the Code) Today the Ombudsman also published a collection of nine
investigations into breaches of the Code and commented on the difficulties she had encountered. These included a lack of knowledge among government departments about the Code and how to deal with requests made under it, unacceptable delays in responding to her Office and, in some cases, a lack of co-operation during investigations.

Ms Abraham 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 Code investigations published today were two which the Ombudsman had no choice but to discontinue after statutory provisions of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 were used. In the first (A33/02) the Cabinet Secretary certified that the information sought about the development of policy leading up to the Human Rights Act 1998 related to the proceedings of a Cabinet Committee and could not, therefore, be provided to the Ombudsman. In the second (A16/03) the Cabinet Office issued a notice informing the Ombudsman that it would be contrary to the public interest to disclose information relating to potential Ministerial conflicts of interest under the Ministerial Code of Conduct. This was the first time such a notice had been issued in respect of a Code investigation.

In another case (A7/03) the Cabinet Office found itself unable to comply fully with the Ombudsman's recommendation to release information about Ministerial gifts. Other investigations involved private sector secondees to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a Home Office action plan for Dartmoor Prison, preferred sites for the disposal of radioactive waste (Department of Trade and Industry), Treasury and Inland Revenue information about the increase in the rates of stamp duty, penalties incurred by a private company under contract to the Criminal Records Bureau and details of driving test routes (Driving Standards Agency).

NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The Parliamentary Ombudsman, Annual Report 2002-03, HC 847.

2. Access to Official Information - Investigations Completed November 2002-June 2003, HC 951.

3. Copies of the reports will be available on the website www.ombudsman.org.uk from 10 July.

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