By David Czarnetzki 28th May 2024
My previous blog, published on 4th May, exposed the fact the Government had fruitlessly spent £51,339 of taxpayers’ money on the recruitment process to appoint a successor to Rob Behrens, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, who retired at the end of March 2024.
However, the response to my Freedom of Information request left four of my questions, outlined on the blog, unanswered. Readers may be interested that, by following the advice to pursue the outstanding aspects of the Freedom of Information request with the Cabinet Office, I have now received the following response:
“Following the announcement of a general election, any decision- making activity regarding the appointment of a new Ombudsman will cease until after the election”.
Parliamentary purdah has kicked the appointment into to the long grass, despite the process to find the replacement having started in April 2023. To this we must also add the Government’s response, published on 23rd May, to the annual scrutiny of the Ombudsman by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC).
In their scrutiny report, PACAC recommended:
“We renew our call for legislative reform of PHSO… The PHSO have outlined to us some concrete issues that are being caused….by lack of reform. Reforms are long overdue and we do not agree with the Government that this is not an urgent issue: rather it has been neglected for too long and further delay is no longer tenable….All political parties should include a commitment to reforming the legislation relating to PHSO in their upcoming manifestos ahead of the General Election, coupled with a commitment to introducing such legislation early in the next Parliament”.
How, then, did the Government respond to this recommendation? Sadly, it was an exact cut and paste to similar calls from PACAC the previous year;
“The Government…considers our system is effective in the context in which it operates, ensuring that effective internal complaints processes address issues without the need to involve ombudsman and that complaints have recourse to the independent ombudsman where necessary”.
The response continues:
While the effective operation of the ombudsman system is an important matter, the Government is not convinced that fundamental reform is a priority at the current time, nor that legislation is the answer to many of the issues identified by the Committee”.
Really? Is this the same party who, in Government in December 2016, introduced a bill to Parliament championed by Chris Skidmore who was the Cabinet Office Minister, hailing it as introducing
Is it the same party in Government who, when Michael Gove was at the Cabinet Office, told PACAC that no reform would take place before 2023-24?
I am afraid it is. Now the same party in Government can’t even be bothered to appoint a permanent Ombudsman but has wasted over £53,000 on the process so far.
Maybe the current Government will be returned to power on 4th July, maybe it will not. I can only conclude that, whoever takes the reins, they will need to be held accountable.
phsothetruestory 
All of this stalling and backtracking on the appointment of a new Parliamentary and Health Ombuds makes me wonder if the Government, annoyed by Rob Behrens passing them the WASPI compensation decision parcel. Have decided to quietly shut down the PHSO?
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Good point. He also went out with a flurry of negative headlines on the NHS cover up culture.
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Don’t think Mr Behrens would be particularly annoying to government over the findings of WASPI failures – Behrens has nicely got them off the hook – government can completely ignore his findings as he knows. So all conveniently put in place, job done and disappear. The WASPI people have been failed, just like everyone is failed by the PHSO corruption.
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Behrens did his job with the Waspi women by hanging the investigation out for the best part of 7 years. A great bit of can kicking by the ombudsman.
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The incompetence and disingenuousness of successive governments is astonishing. I wouldn’t trust them to run a corner shop effectively. They are superbly talented at promoting themselves and misleading the public though.
And what does “our system is effective in the context in which it operates” mean? What is “the context in which it operates”. The context of ensuring that complaints are buried? The context of ensuring that complainants are crushed? The context of misleading the public about the nature of the Ombudsman service? The system is highly effective at all these things and more.
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“What is becoming clear to exasperated MPs whether on the Commons Work and Pensions Committee or the Public Administration and Constitution Affairs Committee is that the government have no intention of naming a date when they will reply. And the government know they do not have to implement the Ombudsman’s paltry findings because the law allows them to ignore or reject any recommendation from the Ombudsman.”
https://davidhencke.com/
Reporting on the Waspi campaign.
This is the reason that the government are perfectly content with the ombudsman as it stands. It is weak, ineffective and as we can all see, is not independent of government.
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Effective (public authority) internal complaints processes’?!!
Certainly, from the point of view of fending off, denying and avoiding blame!
And their contemptuous ‘copy and paste’ dismissal of the PACAC?!
What hope is there for any of us?!
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