Organisation of Public Sector Ombudsmen (Hansard, 13 April 2000)

§ Mr. Stringer

I am pleased to announce that the report of the review of the organisation of public sector ombudsmen in England is published today. Copies have been placed in the Libraries of the House and are also available from the Vote Office.

The start of the review was announced by the then Minister for the Cabinet Office on 30 March 1999 and forms part of the Modernising Government agenda. The review, which was carried out by a team in the Cabinet Office, was wide-ranging: it covered the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Health Service Ombudsman for England and the Local Government Ombudsmen for England, and looked at the potential interaction between those ombudsmen and other independent complaints authorities such as the independent Housing Ombudsman and the Data Protection Commissioner. The review team consulted widely with those who have an interest in the ombudsmen system, including all Members, the ombudsmen themselves, central and local Government, representative bodies (such as the Local Government Association and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) and external interest groups.

The main recommendations in the report are that the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Health Service Ombudsman in England and the Local Government Ombudsmen in England should be merged into a collegiate structure (a new Commission); and that the present requirement for complainants to put their complaints via a Member to the Parliamentary Ombudsman (the "MP filter") should be removed; and that their procedures be simplified and made more flexible.

The Government welcome the review's focus on providing a more customer-oriented Ombudsman service. It recognises that the recommendations raise a number of significant issues about the status and constitution of the Ombudsmen. Accordingly, we shall now be consulting widely before reaching our final conclusions on implementing the review's recommendations.