Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-48)
2 DECEMBER 2004
ANN ABRAHAM,
TRISH LONGDON
AND MR
BILL RICHARDSON
Q40 Chairman: I have a
couple more questions, if I may, before we end. We are interested
that you are taking on some really beefy inquiries at the moment,
obviously, Equitable, after a very difficult start for the office,
you have recovered from big time, and now you are doing an extremely
important inquiry. We are very glad that you have been able to
see your way to doing this, and now you have come in and said
you are going to do this important inquiry on occupational pensions.
Particularly on the pensions thing, not to go into the detail
of it, but it would be very helpful, I think, to know what were
the kinds of considerations that made you think that an inquiry
of that kind was possible. You seem to be pushing at the boundaries
of the office in a way that I think is to be commended: an activist
ombudsman. I really want to know, though, what are the considerations
that weigh on you when you launch into areas like that, and perhaps
the subsidiary questions would be: is it because there are very
organised pressure groups around who have spotted that you are
an activist ombudsman and if they put the case to you and get
your ear they may find you a route which is extremely useful?
If that is the case, does that tell against people who are not
in organised groups who may need your services?
Ms Abraham: I sincerely
hope it does not tell against people who are not in organised
groups, and I would be very concerned if that were the case. I
do not believe it to be case. Certainly the thousands of enquiries
that we get directly from members of the public individually would
suggest otherwise. I suppose I would answer that by saying, what
questions do we ask ourselves with any complaint that is put us?
Is there prima facie evidence of maladministration? Is
there a case to answer here? Obviously we ask ourselves the jurisdictional
questions: is it ours to take on? Is it something that a different
dispute resolution mechanism, if you would like to call it that,
is better equipped to handle? There may be some disputes which
are about the application of the law, determination of the law,
which a tribunal is much better placed than us to deal with and
anyway somebody has already gone there or somebody has already
gone to the courts. Are our skills the best to address the issue?
Is there a worthwhile outcome? These are classic questions for
the ombudsman. Is it for us? Can we do it? Can we achieve anything
by doing it? I think the occupational pensions complaints came
into that category. It was extremely helpful that an All-Party
Group of MPs did quite a lot of work in putting complaints together,
so we had a lot of help from MPs in saying this is the entirety
of the complaint population. We did not have complaints coming
at us from a variety of places saying, "The trustees are
saying this but the pension members are saying that." We
had some help from MPs in the compilation of the scope, if you
like, of those complaints, but in some ways it was, the investigation
manager said to me, quite an easy statement of complaint to write.
Once you boiled it down to the key issues and separated it from
the legal action which was being pursued in relation to what,
in effect, was European law on the Insolvency Directives, there
were two key issues for us. Was there misleading information in
booklets and guidance that was produced by DWP and OPRA, and should
the information that was available to the Treasury and DWP on
minimum funding requirements and decisions that were made about
that have been available more widely to trustees and members?
It is complex territory in some ways; in others the administrative
issues are pretty clear-cut, I think.
Q41 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I
have been looking through your accounts. I am sorry, I was late.
This may say something. I was not quite sure where we had got
to in the cycle, but I knew one thing, they would not touch the
accounts!
Ms Abraham: Questions
that are prefaced, "I have just been looking through your
accounts"—
Mr Liddell-Grainger: It
is not that. What intrigues me is simply this. There is an enormous
amount of money going backwards and forwards between you, the
Welsh ombudsman and the Scottish ombudsman. There are recovery
funds, there are balance sheet recovery funds, there are extra
receipts. To put it crudely, this seems to be a total waste of
executive time and money. Why can you not run the whole thing
as one. You have virtually got four pages on the movement of money.
You have got quite a Treasury operation going on here. You are
not fencing goods or something across the borders! Half a million
from Wales, nearly £400,000 from Scotland, another £162,000
from Scotland, a million pounds you have recovered this year.
Why can we not consolidate it?
Ms Abraham: The
world has changed over the last few years in that the responsibilities
for Scotland and Wales have been devolved to a Scottish Public
Services Ombudsman and a Public Service Ombudsman for Wales, and
there is legislation coming through on that now. So it has been
a changing picture. My office has been devolving people, offices,
computers, all sorts of things, clinicians, clinical advice, and
we have had book-keeping arrangements in place for that. I am
now the Health Service Ombudsman for England and the UK
Parliamentary Ombudsman, and there are separate responsibilities
in Scotland and Wales, but Bill can do a quick answer on the detail.
Mr Richardson:
We are providing services to other organisations. There are separate
Administration issues here and basically we need to keep the books
straight.
Q42 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I
notice you have not upgraded your computers. Are we due for a
real problem this year? You have put back £300,000 for upgrades
for next year which you have not carried forward?
Mr Richardson:
We have done it.
Mr Liddell-Grainger: You
have.
Q43 Chairman: I think
we will settle for keeping the books straight. That is the kind
of answer we understand and approve of. The Committee is also
doing an inquiry on what we call "choice and voice",
as you will know, following the Government's interest in these
matters. The question I simply want to ask you is do you feel
with all the interest in those kinds of issues that the more bread
and butter stuff of complaint and redress and the part that that
plays in issues of choice and voice is in danger of being overlooked?
Ms Abraham: Overlooked
by us?
Q44 Chairman: No, overlooked
in the way that the Government talks about it and the way that
other people talk about it, that there is less attention to some
of these basic good administrative principles and the role that
they play in enabling people to access services properly, to have
a voice when things go wrong? Is that the kind of feeling that
you would have?
Ms Abraham: I understand
what you say. I suppose one of my administrative principles might
be: listen to your customers. That might not be a bad starting
point really. We have much more to say and much more experience
to speak about in relation to voice than we do about choice, I
suspect. We can talk about customer experience, patient experience,
experience of families. What that tells us is that people are
not being listened to as much as they should be and that, in order
for voices to be heard, some of that support, levelling of the
playing field, is an important thing to which we can contribute
and others should be contributing. I am not sure I have much to
say about the choice agenda really.
Q45 Chairman: But complaint
is an important part of voice, is it not?
Ms Abraham: It
is indeed, yes.
Q46 Chairman: We will
perhaps settle for that, unless there are things that you want
to say to us that we have not asked you?
Ms Abraham: I do
not think so. I think we have covered all the areas I highlighted
as being of particular concern to us and a number that I thought
might come up. We are saying goodbye to Access to Official Information.
Q47 Chairman: We are.
We have not talked about that, I suppose, because we felt that
we were saying goodbye to it.
Ms Abraham: Indeed.
Q48 Chairman: Thank you
for looking after it on our behalf, and thank you for your first
two years. Thank you all for coming today. We are extremely privileged
to be following your work and the work of the office at the moment,
because there are some interesting and good things going on there?
Ms Abraham: Thank
you very much for that. I would say in return, it is very helpful
and welcome to have the interest and the support of the Committee
in what we are trying to do.
Chairman: Thank you for
this morning.
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