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Miss Johnson: The Chancellor remains directly accountable to Parliament for what is done with the RPI. There is no evidence--nor has there been any suggestion--of any political interference. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to egg me on, I can contrast the present situation with what happened to the claimant count under the previous Government: over 18 years it was amended 30 times. Strangely, the vast majority of those amendments led to a large drop in the claimant count. I do not recall the Conservatives objecting to that.
Mr. Edward Davey: Why should the RPI be treated differently from every other statistic? The whole purpose
of having an independent statistics commission is to get reliability and integrity back into statistics for the reason to which she referred--the abuse of unemployment statistics by the previous Government. Why should the RPI still be under political control?
Miss Johnson: The RPI is of special importance to the UK economy and, for that reason, is directly--and under long-standing arrangements--under the authority of the Chancellor, who is accountable to this House.
Sir Michael Spicer: Will the Minister give way?
Miss Johnson: No, I will not give way. I have given way plenty of times.
The Government attach great importance to high- quality national statistics that command public confidence. At the heart of the production of those statistics will remain the ONS, both in its role as the major statistics organisation in the country and in its role in enhancing statistics across government.
I am confident that the processes and structures that we have put in place through the White Paper will ensure that, in future, the Office for National Statistics will be an outward-looking and innovative organisation, producing statistics to the highest standards of quality and integrity, and responsive to user needs.
We have great aspirations for the future work of the commission and the national statistician. We believe that we will end up with national statistics of greater transparency, and with more accountability built into the system, than anything we have seen in the UK. This will provide what so many hon. Members have supported--a recognition that we cannot have good government without good information. We believe that the changes we are making in the White Paper will lead to the good information on which even better government can be based.
Dr. Tony Wright (Cannock Chase):
While listening to the previous debate--and to other exchanges across the Floor of the House--it occurred to me that there might be a case for having a statistical ombudsman to test some of the claims that are made. Perhaps the new statistics commission could spawn an ombudsman's arm to which we could send some of the disputed figures. However, I doubt whether we shall see that.
It is a great pleasure to introduce these reports from the Select Committee on Public Administration. The House will be aware that these are not the reports that have been wholly taking the Committee's attention recently, as much of its recent work has been concerned with looking at the draft Freedom of Information Bill. I am told that the Government are tomorrow to give their response to our deliberations, and we will look with interest at what they say following our extensive labours on that front.
It is a pleasure to introduce the reports and to invite the House to consider--albeit for a short time--the work of the ombudsmen and the work of the Select Committee in relation to them. However, it is also a source of regret--even shame--for the House that there has been no debate on the work of the ombudsmen in this Parliament; indeed, there has been no such debate since 1994. That is a source of shame, because I am referring to an institution or instrument devised by Parliament; I am talking about Parliament's instrument to hold the Executive to administrative account. Because of that, an analysis of and debate on the work of the ombudsmen through the Select Committee would give the House an opportunity to engage in some serious scrutiny of the work of Departments as monitored by the complaints that have come the way of the ombudsmen, and then been reported to the Select Committee.
It strikes me as ironic--even tragic--that the only people who come to these debates are my esteemed colleagues on the Committee. The people who should come are those who want to use the reports of the ombudsmen and of the Select Committee to interrogate Departments, which is what those reports enable them to do.
It is a source of great regret that the House does not have even an annual debate on the work of its own instrument. We should have an annual opportunity to engage in such interrogation. The House has an annual debate on the work of the Public Accounts Committee. It would be right and proper for us to have a similar annual debate on the work of the ombudsmen, as reported through the Public Administration Committee.
When my hon. Friend the Minister replies to the debate, he will be in the fortunate position of being able to tell us that there is a review of the work of the ombudsmen and
another on how the new NHS complaints system is working. It is a good pitch for a Minister to be on, because he can call in aid at least two reviews.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping):
For the sake of correctness, we are conducting an evaluation rather than a review of the NHS complaints procedure. We want to look at what is happening, build on success and identify the difficulties.
Dr. Wright:
I was fearful for a moment that my hon. Friend's intervention was going to be rather more serious. However, I am glad to accept that we should be talking about an evaluation of the NHS complaints system, which has serious problems, as evidenced by an initial study. Hon. Members may want to say more about that later.
My serious point was that, although my hon. Friend can rightly call in aid the review and evaluation, it goes closer to his responsibility to say something to the House about why there is no annual opportunity to consider the work of the ombudsmen--an institution that was created by the House to do a particular job.
When I was thinking about the debate, I had a slight flight of fancy. Would it not be extraordinary if this year, with the Queen's Speech coming in a few weeks, the Government decided not to do the usual thing of announcing a raft of new legislation, but to spend the year trying to evaluate how well existing laws were working?
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire):
Marvellous idea.
Dr. Wright:
I know that it is an outrageously splendid idea. The House is extraordinarily good at processing legislation. We assume that, as one year follows the last, another raft of new legislation will be processed. However, the House is very bad at evaluating--to use the Minister's word--how well the legislation and the administration of it is working. Through the ombudsmen and our audit and inspection regimes, the House could begin to look seriously at how the Government are working and how well existing legislation is being implemented, rather than always taking the more exciting course of introducing more. That is a deficiency in the operation of the House. The ombudsmen and the Select Committee give the House an opportunity to engage in that.
The ombudsman is a peculiarly British invention, although it is not a British word. There are more ombudsmen in this country than anywhere else. We may have borrowed the idea initially, but my goodness, we have run with it, developed it and proved its worth. We do not have a system of administrative courts. The ombudsman is a peculiarly British way of handling redress in relation to the state and public services.
Thirty years ago, there were great doubts about whether Parliament should set up the institution. The Conservative Opposition of the day, led in splendid form by Quintin Hogg, were very much against it. They argued that it would undermine Parliament, whose job it was to engage in redress of grievance, and that it would be improper for another institution to take on that role. That sounds quaint in the era of citizens charters and all the rest. It may just mean that it takes the Conservatives 30 years to catch up with developments. Who knows, perhaps they will be
raving Euro-fanatics in 30 years. It was a curious and revealing argument at the time, because although it was a proper constitutional point, it was nonsense and would have deprived the citizen of the opportunity to acquire a new device for seeking redress against administrative actions.
The system was set up in an interesting and distinctively British way, with odd terms that no one understood, such as maladministration. The ombudsmen were supposed to seek out injustices consequent on maladministration. They worked away at the framework that Parliament had given them to produce a highly effective instrument on behalf of the citizen. It bedded down and has been extended over the years. In the early 1970s, it was extended into the health service ombudsman scheme. In 1994, the ombudsman was given responsibility for the operation of the code of practice and access to Government information. In 1996 clinical complaints in the health service as well as the family health servicewere added to the health service commissioner's responsibilities.
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