Written evidence from Alan Reid (PSC 05)

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Scrutiny 2017-18 inquiry

The conclusions and recommendations of the independent peer review panel, and the evidence underpinning them

“Independent study calls for Ombudsman to have greater powers” was the panel’s main message according to the Ombudsman. He contended that he could provide justice for more people if he had powers to investigate without a formal complaint.   The panel chair repeated the message, adding praise for “good value for money” and “excellent work on complaint assessment and investigations”. 

Earlier in 2018, the Ombudsman had blogged “…how such powers might have helped avert some of the misery suffered by people affected by the Windrush affair”. His contention is dubious. In the period from 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2018, the Parliamentary Ombudsman received 29 ‘enquiries’ about Home Office Immigration Enforcement overall, of which five were closed as no MP referral[1].  During this period, 14 were closed without investigation.  Seventeen were accepted for investigation, only one was upheld and 12 partly upheld (which may be over some procedural matter) and nine not upheld.  Two complaints of mine against Home Office Border Force, for whom production of my British passport was not enough to enter my own country, were rejected by the Parliamentary Ombudsman (see below).

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration already draws up own initiative reports on his subjects, which he lays before Parliament. Forty per cent of his recommendations have not been fully implemented by the Home Office. In 2016, he had submitted a report on Home Office ‘hostile environment’ measures. He has also submitted two reports critical of complaint handling, in particular by UK Border Force. In his latest annual report, the Independent Chief Inspector summarises thus: “Border Force had a good deal more work to do to bring its complaints handling up to the required level of performance”. For his part, the Parliamentary Ombudsman is too readily deceived by UK Border Force on both procedure and substance, in my experience.

Turning to PACAC’s original request for a “robust assurance on the value for money of the PHSO’s operations”, the panel’s executive summary relates that:

“The panel considered that cost-per case was a very limited measure of value that required significant contextualisation and sensitivity in terms of its interpretation. It was also a measure that excluded or underplayed a large amount of the added value that ombudsman offices delivered for their stakeholders.”

Comments on the review are made under than three headings.

“Stakeholders”

The panel’s report does not tell us who the “stakeholders” (persons or entities) are to whom “added value” is being “delivered”.  According to Wikipedia, in management theory there can be primary stakeholders, secondary stakeholders and excluded stakeholders.   In this usage, the primary “stakeholders” must surely be, firstly, Parliament which votes the money the Ombudsman spends, and secondly those citizens who go to the Ombudsman with an eligible complaint. These citizens are not interested in “delivery” of “value added”; they are interested in obtaining justice.

The other categories of “stakeholders” presumably include employees, public bodies, the industry surrounding NHS England complaints (over 25 in dentistry alone), pressure groups, individual campaigners and the general public. In written evidence to last year’s enquiry, the Ombudsman referred to “service users and our key stakeholders” without defining “our key stakeholders” who are, moreover, to be distinguished from “service users”.  Elsewhere, he has made reference to unnamed “strategic partners”.   The review would have benefitted from a listing of these entities carrying such weight with the Ombudsman. The one body mentioned by the panel is a patients’ association, described as an “important stakeholder” without any elucidation.

“Value for money”

The money which the Ombudsman spends comes not from user charges but from appropriations voted by Parliament. A study of “value for money” should look at the optimal use of resources to achieve intended outcomes, in this case the taking up of eligible complaints with a view to securing justice. The siphoning of resources away from casework to other, “softer” operations therefore does not truly represent value for money. These other operations seemingly include exercises with selected service users, with newly-discovered key stakeholders and with strategic partners, and maybe duplicating some of their functions. The reputational damage from extended waits, incompetence in dealing with eligible complaints and case reviews which do little more than rewrite the request in the second person singular also lessens value for money.

The panel’s upbeat conclusions on casework were based on documentation supplied by the Ombudsman and on staff interviews. The panel appears to have looked only at processes and not at outcomes.  No sample cases seemed to have been examined, to see how long cases and reviews take at each stage and how caseworkers and reviewers operate. Do Parliamentary caseworkers have careful regard to legislation, including human rights legislation, rules and good practice, or do they just jump towards what they think is “reasonable” and reverse engineer to their conclusion? A learned judge’s determination of “reasonable” can be more readily accepted than that of a Parliamentary Ombudsman employee.

Quality improvement, feedback

On the basis of my experiences, the panel are wrong about the excellence of the processes of the service charter, feedback and quality improvement. On so-called quality assurance, I give my last example.   In response to a review request, I was assured that there had been “quality assurance checks” (plural).  It turned out that this was a short e-mail at 10:06 from the investigator to “Dave” simply asking for “approval for the case to close”. There was no recorded reply.   The investigator had received my six pages of comments on his draft report at 9:10 that day and he e-mailed his final report with an unchanged conclusion at 11:50 that day (hence my request for a review).

The panel remarked that “…some private ombudsman offices, like the Financial Ombudsman Service, were perhaps more forward looking in their use of customer feedback.”  One panel member comes from the FOS.  Earlier this year, Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee raised concerns, also highlighted in the media, that some FOS staff were not behaving appropriately and fulfilling the organisation’s legal duty as they should. The FOS then announced an independent review. The Committee has raised various further concerns with the FOS over its response to the review.

The performance and value for money of the PHSO in 2017/18, including the service provided to complainants.

Performance

Citizens expect government departments and bodies normally to get things right first time. But where departments do not have proper line management and staff training, the line of least resistance will be to challenge the citizen to write to their complaints department.  In turn, the complaints department can challenge the citizen to pass the parcel to their MP, to countersign a ten-page, badly-designed complaint form, and to attach the whole paper trail for the Parliamentary Ombudsman. As for his casework performance, searchable decisions on the website finished in 2015. The Ombudsman’s “News” items during 2018 do not help much either; they were mainly his observations on the industry surrounding NHS England complaints.

In my evidence last year, I recounted my experiences with the Parliamentary Ombudsman over two separate complaints against UK Border Force entry officers at Edinburgh Airport who could not cite the Act of Parliament used to question me.  The eventual investigation report on the first rejected my complaint, with the previous Parliamentary Ombudsman herself implying, on almost comical premises, that I was most likely carrying prohibited goods.  A taking up of the second complaint was refused because “I did not have to answer the question” (the entry officer never said that) and because “I could leave” (without my passport?).   The collusion with UK Border Force is obvious.

A third complaint against UK Border Force has recently gone in, involving an entry “officer” (no badge number) wrongly citing the Immigration Act to this British citizen. After a two-stage rebuff by UK Border Force addressing complaints I never made, my MP sent off the countersigned Parliamentary Ombudsman form on 24 October 2018.  On 6 November 2018 I received an e-mail from PHSO Enquiries relating to my ‘enquiry’, a strange way to describe a duly-submitted form countersigned by an MP without any preceding enquiry (but that does bump up the number of ‘enquiries’).  Actually, I did not know what the e-mail was about, because it was encrypted by Egress Software Technologies Ltd.   Although the form does not mention “Egress”, I had responded to the question “Is there anything we can do to make it easier for you to access our service?” by asking that e-mails are not encrypted[2].   I do not understand why the Parliamentary Ombudsman tries to make access to his service conditional on signing up with Egress Software Technologies Ltd, even to receive a procedural letter containing stuff already on his website (and with links that do not work). 

After my two “feedbacks”, the e-mail eventually arrived in clear on 30 November 2018, warning me of an extended wait for the next step. Also, I was informed that any report may be “shared” with e.g. the Care Quality Commission. The apposite bodies would have been the Independent Chief Inspector and the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner in Scotland. Also, unless I object, the Parliamentary Ombudsman may seek specialist advice on my case from e.g. a health professional. In my “feedback”, I have objected to a (mental?) health professional seeing me, but I had no objection to advice from an immigration lawyer.

Attitudes towards complainants who turn to the Parliamentary Ombudsman via an MP

Arising out of a challenge by UK Border Force complaints in my 2018 case, I made a subject access request.  Numerous denigrations of my character are on my file.  Since the response was empty of material relating to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, I am entitled to assume that these denigrations were incorporated in UK Border Force’s submissions to the Ombudsman, who therefore decided it was reasonable to reject my complaints, ignoring the legislation. I give three examples, with rebuttals.

“Mr Reid’s complaints are vexatious and have an underlying agenda.”

Home Office officials are the ones with their own agendas.

“A pattern of behaviour has clearly been established for Mr Reid. This includes indicative signs of avoiding the e-Gates to invite personal interaction and to accordingly create the opportunity to raise a complaint”.

In April 2015, I had simply realised too late that my new British passport was an e-passport. In April 2016, I had been one of the first off the plane, the arrivals hall was empty, and I chose the EEA desks because the route was less meandering. In April 2018, I had been one of the first off the plane and the e-gates showed red.  All these facts were mentioned.  For the record, in my other six-monthly entries through Edinburgh, once I had only the EEA desk option (no question was asked), the remaining four times I went through the e-gates.  Also, I have always gone through the UK Border Force e-gates at Brussels Midi station.

“He was visibly shaking with rage….Mr Reid’s attitude and general anger. I found him to be aggressive….Mr Reid was visibly shaking and red in the face…behaviour and manner to be irrational and totally unnecessary”

I had quietly asked the entry officer what Act she was using to ask me where I came from. She just repeated her question. I quietly asked her again. She just repeated her question. Given that she had come out for my flight, had my Advance Passenger Information, that there was an arrivals screen above her, and that she was not handing me back my British passport, I asked for the duty manager. I was saving the entry officer from getting more het up.

Value for money

Complainants do not pay money to complain to government departments, or to complain to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. For complainers, “value for money” is an empty expression.  But users certainly pay in other ways: having to go through an MP, the extended waits, and the exasperation in combatting everything from misconduct in public office to administrative incompetence. 

Brexit

Reporting on his conversation with the European Ombudsman on 22 June 2018, the Ombudsman blogged: “We also discussed our roles as ombudsmen in relation to Brexit, including making sure that citizens know what their rights are. Ultimately, once there is a resolution (assuming there is a resolution) of the negotiations, our role will be to make sure people get what they are promised and that those rights are not adversely affected in any way. We’ll need to work closely with our European colleagues to do that.”

On 11 July 2018, the Immigration Minister told the Exiting the EU Select Committee: “The Withdrawal Agreement makes it explicitly clear that there has to be ability for independent arbitration. Until such time as we have established that, we would hope to be able to use the Chief Inspector of Borders in order to do so, but there will need to be an independent arbitrator in due course” (Q2268). 

The 2017-2018 report to Parliament by the Ombudsman, published on 18 July 2018 states: “We have considered the implications for the organisation on the UK leaving the EU and do not consider there are any specific risks or issues at this time.”(p58).   This is a different vision from the one in his blog.

In the light of this sentence, I asked under the FOI Act for the risk assessment.  I was told that the information was in the form of notes from a Strategy and Insight Tasking Board meeting, which I could not have (and which I had not asked for). On appeal, the Ombudsman, as the qualified person under the Act, gave his reasons for non-disclosure. It is difficult to believe that this meeting note is all that exists about Brexit.  Then there is the interesting preference of the Immigration Minister for the Independent Chief Inspector, who has no powers in specific cases, over the Parliamentary Ombudsman who does.  

Added to the refusal  to disclose was : “Also, please note that the Chief Executive Officer, Amanda Campbell has/will recuse herself from Home Office related Brexit matters.” , which is an unusual remark if there are no Brexit issues. Ms Campbell had come in 2016 from the Home Office where she had been the top manager in Immigration Enforcement and a top manager in Border Force. She had joined as “Deputy Ombudsman and CEO”; she is so described on the Board Members web page, but elsewhere she is now just “CEO”. In my recollection, it was announced that she was to have nothing to do with Home Office cases for her first two years.  The potential remains for inherent bias throughout the Parliamentary Ombudsman in favour of the Home Office, whatever Ms Campbell’s true roles in policy and in casework.

December 2018