The release of the final ‘Women’s State Pension Age’ report revealed to the 3.5 million (or so) women waiting on compensation that the Ombudsman has no powers of compliance. He is indeed a toothless watchdog, created so deliberately by the acts of parliament which limit his reach.

His recent dire warnings about the state of the NHS, simply rebound on his office given that it is for the Ombudsman to hold these bodies to account for poor service, poor complaint handling and maladministration. He has confirmed that the situations he inherited, maternity deaths, eating disorders and cover-ups have failed to improve during his term of office.

The only people who fail to see that the Emperor is wearing no clothes are the ones responsible for weaving the yarn and spinning the narrative about the independent and impartial Ombudsman. We have seen from the intervention of the PM that on appointment the Ombudsman must pass muster with very government he is then charged with holding to account.

This review from Nicholas Wheatley exposes the facts about his term of office.

Rob Behrens 7 year term as Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman came to an end on 31st March and he no longer has the power to wreck people’s lives with his biased and institution friendly approach to handling the complaints of members of the public against health organisations and public bodies.

Perhaps in recognition of Behrens’ failure to support complainants or perhaps in recognition of the number of times he was economical with the truth when under scrutiny by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, he received little in the way of recognition for his term of service from the Committee when he appeared before them in November for the annual scrutiny of the PHSO. The most that William Wragg, the chair of the Committee, could manage was a weak

“I thank him on behalf of the Committee for his work”.

Hardly the plaudits that might be expected at the end of a successful period as head of the premier Ombudsman service in the UK.

Nick Smith, Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, was a bit more forthcoming when he spoke in Parliament on 25th March during a debate on the appointment of an Acting Ombudsman to stand in until a new Ombudsman has been appointed. Mr Smith spoke of Behrens’

“sterling work leading the PHSO since 2017”, his “outstanding record of public service, investigating suspected failures in our public service and helping people seek redress”, and his “dedication to the families and victims of public administration, particularly in the NHS”.

If only it was all true, or any part of it was true. Nick Smith did rather give the game away though when he confessed that

“I remember him at Coventry Polytechnic back in the day”.

So Rob and Nick were old buddies.

Alex Burghart, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, was even more fulsome during the same debate, speaking of

“the great work he has done to transform the PHSO”.

He then gave some examples of this “great work”, stating

“he has improved complaint handling, established an independent expert advisory panel to inform decision making, and set up Europe’s first ombudsman academy to build capability. He has also introduced new ways of working, including mediation in casework.”

He finished his paean with this tribute,

“I praise Rob for his achievements and wish him all the very best for the future.”

Behrens’ “great work” as listed by Alex Burghart is thin gruel indeed. The claimed improvement in complaint handling is nowhere to be seen. The Key Performance Indicators of the Service Charter, set up to monitor case handling from the complainant’s perspective, have shown no improvement, and in some cases declined, over the period of Behrens’ tenure of office. The so-called “independent expert advisory panel” was set up as a light-touch panel at the Ombudsman’s beck and call and does little more than review and make tentative recommendations on PHSO proposals. “Europe’s first ombudsman academy” is the internal training organisation of the PHSO. There is no indication that its accreditations have any value at all outside of the PHSO. As for mediation, only 74 complaints, out of 35,662, were resolved by the PHSO through mediation, in 2022-23. If this is Alex Burghart’s idea of “great work” then it just seems to underline the lack of expectations or even interest that the government has in the work of the Ombudsman.

But why the sobriquet “Butcher” Behrens? For the very simple reason that Behrens term of office will be remembered most notably for the way he slashed the number of investigations into complaints. He almost literally decimated the investigatory capacity of the PHSO by reducing the number of complaints investigated by 84%. In the process he shattered the hopes and expectations of many members of the public who had taken their complaints to the PHSO in the mistaken belief that they would receive due process and redress for the maladministration and system failure they had been subjected to. Not only did he slash the number of investigations, he also failed to mention any intention of doing this in the corporate strategies and business plans he published for public consumption, thereby failing to inform both the public and also Parliament as to his plans for the PHSO at all stages of his tenure. Perhaps this reduction in complaints investigated was the great work referred to by Alex Burghart.

The graph below shows the enormous reduction in investigations undertaken by the PHSO during Behrens tenure.

Not only did Behrens slash the number of investigations by 84%, he also slashed the number of complaints that were fully upheld by 68%, despite a 15% increase in complaints received. Either the number of unjustified complaints made by the public increased more then threefold under Behrens period in office, or more likely there was a deliberate change in complaint handling to ensure that it became more difficult for complainants to have their complaints upheld. 

The graph below shows the reduction in the number of complaints fully upheld during Behrens tenure.

Rob Behrens will be remembered as the Ombudsman under which the number of complaints investigated and the number of complaints upheld were slashed, and the hopes of thousands for fair judgement and redress were butchered.

So good riddance Butcher Behrens. You will not be missed.