Examination of Witness (Questions 60-75)
MS ANN
ABRAHAM
2 MAY 2006
Q60 Grant Shapps: It seems to me,
apart from the dozen people sitting behind you, probably the people
who work in your office, and those of us on this Committee, there
is barely anyone else out there who is really interested in your
work, perhaps apart also from the people you resolve complaints
for. The Government does not really care one way or the other
what you are saying, does it?
Ms Abraham: I would go back to
the 3,649 other cases that we investigated in the last financial
year.
Q61 Grant Shapps: Let us include
them but I mean the Government.
Ms Abraham: That is not how it
feels from where I am sitting. If we look at tax credits, it seems
to me that that was a report that caused quite a stir at the time
and in which the Committee took a very welcome, detailed interest.
As a result of that report and a continuing dialogue with the
Revenue about the recommendations in that report, I think we have
worked with the Revenue to help improve the delivery of tax credits
for a lot of people. If I look at what we have done on long term
funding for continuing care for elderly and disabled people, that
is a major area of work for the office over the last three years
which has had a huge effect in relation to those people but also
has raised the standard of decision making in the NHS in relation
to continuing care decisions. I have not had to fight to get the
Department of Health and the NHS to listen to me on those issues.
After some initial to-ing and fro-ing, the dialogue with the Revenue
has been a good one. The dialogue with the Home Office on the
Victims' Code has been a good one, so I do not think that is the
case.
Q62 Grant Shapps: You have described
in one place diversionary, delaying tactics by the Government
and you said in another that the Government has responded to a
report but it just was not the one that you happened to write.
Somewhere else you say they ignored your recommendations and you
issued two 10(3)s, even though they are extremely rare in the
history of the Ombudsman, and yet despite all of that you are
telling this Committee that the Government is listening to the
Ombudsman.
Ms Abraham: I think I am saying
it is listening most of the time. There are cases that come along
from time to time that are difficult, that have a big price tag,
that are inevitably going to be difficult. The pensions report
is one of them. The Ministry of Defence Debt of Honour report
is a different creature. It would be very interesting to see when
Mr Watkins's internal inquiry into how the Ministry of Defence
got itself into this situation is available later this year. Out
of that I hope will come some very significant learning for the
department and perhaps for departments generally about how not
to respond to complaints. The way the Minister has responded in
that situation with a very clear determination to get to the bottom
of this and put it right—he said that to me on a number
of occasions—is a very good example of how complaint handling
should be done, albeit somewhat late in the day. I always say
that I do not expect people never to go wrong; I judge people
by what they do in putting things right. The pensions report is
big and difficult. I have been disappointed by the Government
response, not so much by the fact of it but by the nature of it
and partly the fact of it, but I think it is exceptional and extraordinary.
It may just be that 10(3)s come along in clusters like these things
do sometimes.
Q63 Grant Shapps: Let us talk about
your workload because I suppose it is a different indication of
how busy you are as an Ombudsman. You mention 3,649 cases from
last year. I also note in your report and when you were last in
front of us you were looking for a reduction in the number of
cases that you were handling. You can either do that by ramping
up the number of staff you have working on cases or by the moves
that you have now taken which I suggest are about preventing cases
getting into your file in the first place. For example, the most
recent circulation we have had is that you will kick back tax
credit cases to HM Revenue and Customs. It is easy to solve your
problem with case work if you close yourself down, is it not?
Ms Abraham: I have said before
that my long term aim is to put myself out of business but there
is no sign of that yet. You are right. There are a number of ways
in which you can reduce the case load. I am pleased to say that,
although we have not done quite as well as I had hoped when I
talked to the Committee in October, we have managed to get a substantial
reduction in the cases in hand at the end of this financial year.
All the details of that will come in my annual report to be published
in July. We did that even though it went up before it came down.
There is a continuing care factor in here which makes it difficult
to see these figures in a simple way. In relation to the continuing
care work we have looked at thousands of cases since that report
was published in February 2003. I believe that it is not the job
of my office to be the volume complaint handler for the government
and the NHS. Therefore, in the same way as we are having discussions
with the Health Care Commission and the Department of Health about
this and similarly with the Tax Credits Office, the right place
for these disputes and complaints to be resolved is in the front
line, quickly, to put things right.
Q64 Grant Shapps: We would all accept
that but I put it to you in an area of interest for me, tax credits,
that that is not really happening. What is happening is that,
now you have closed down yourself as an opportunity to complain
about them, instead the complainants go directly back to HMRC.
I see no evidence whatsoever that they are handling these cases,
in my own constituency's case, any better than they were on 20
October when you came to see us last. In fact, the Public Accounts
Committee have said that £2.2 billion was the latest reported
over payment which you will no doubt say is before the period
that you were talking about. Nonetheless, when you were last here,
I tried to suggest to you the system was in disarray. I suggest
to you now it remains in disarray. The only difference is that
you no longer wish to take on that workload because it rightly
should be handled by the department, but it does not mean that
the outcome is any better for anybody, does it?
Ms Abraham: The reason that we
are sending them back is not because we decided we do not want
to do it any more. We still have 300 cases down the road so we
still have a volume of tax credits work. What we are saying is
that when I talked to you in October I had absolutely no confidence
that those complainants were going to get their cases properly
dealt with and resolved in the front line; and that we are now
at a point—this is what I said in the letter to Members
at the end of March—where I am confident that they will
be. If that turns out not to be the case, we will be back in there.
I have a meeting with the deputy chairman of the Revenue coming
up in a couple of weeks when we will review the whole position
in relation to those recommendations and the current state of
play. We will carry on doing tax credits work as long as it is
necessary, in the same way as we have done with continuing care
work for the last three years. I think it is right that I should
say to government departments—and there is a similar conversation
to be had with DWP around Job Centre Plus and Child Support Agency
complaints—that it is not the job of the Ombudsman to do
their first instance complaint handling for them.
Q65 Kelvin Hopkins: My main point
is about challenging government policy and its direction of travel.
On the credits system, the merging of revenue collection and benefits
administration may not have been a good idea. Year end assessments
for tax went very well. The Inland Revenue did a good job and
was not generally criticised. As soon as the benefits—the
tax credits—problem comes in, everything goes wrong and
there is serious criticism. That is one challenge. Administering
the system correctly may need many more civil servants to get
it right, so we do not have this ongoing problem of people being
overpaid and having to rake overpayments back. That again would
conflict with the Government's intention to reduce the number
of civil servants. The number of civil servants required to administrate
tax credits efficiently might be so large as to make the scheme
look less attractive, even to government. On a whole series of
fronts, is it not possible that just by raising this issue—and
you had to do it because you were approached—you have challenged
Government and made them less confident in their policies? Is
this not part of the problem?
Ms Abraham: I suppose one of my
aims should be and I suspect is to make the Government more confident
rather than less so. It comes back to learning the lessons of
good administration. I come back to the Debt of Honour case. There
are some recommendations in there which are across government
about what to do and what not to do when setting up an ex gratia
scheme. There is always learning. Policy decisions are for governments
to make. All I can do, if there are administrative consequences
that flow from those policy decisions, is to point them out.
Q66 Chairman: On the Debt of Honour,
we are making progress with the Government. Your report and our
follow-up of your report have worked wonders, but the original
complainant in that case, Professor Hayward, has written to me
to say, "Thank you very much for making the progress that
you have made but my sister," who was interned with him,
"is having to spend much of her adult life in the United
States. According to what the Government is saying, I shall come
under this scheme now but she will not" and yet his point
is, "Surely the reason why we are both in the frame is because
we were interned, not because of where we subsequently happen
to live?"
Ms Abraham: Well, he has not written
to me or if he has I have not seen his letter yet. You know what
the recommendations in the report were. I think three of them
have now been complied with and the fourth one, which is about
reconsidering the position of Professor Hayward and those in a
similar position to him, is under way. We now have a 20-year residence
rule and I can see how that would not work for Professor Hayward's
sister. At the moment we have not got the announcement of what
the working group is going to do and the eligibility criteria.
I understood that was being worked through in the Ministry of
Defence in a working group chaired by the minister with input
from Mr Bridge. I do not know the detail of what is emerging from
that and I do not know what the final eligibility criteria are
going to be so I am reluctant to say anything more at this stage.
Q67 Chairman: We shall all keep an
eye on this. Can I ask a couple of questions on the pensions report?
It seems to me that at the heart of it is the argument about where
the liability of the state lies and what the Government has said,
in essence, is "it is not our job to underwrite private sector
schemes". You have said "but I did not say that",
but you said something. What you have said, it seems to me, is
that the Government did provide some sort of framework of believed
security around those schemes. What I want to ask you is this:
when I read Dr Ros Altmann's response to the Government's response
to your report, she says, talking about these schemes: "the
truth is that the Government interfered with these schemes especially
on wind-up so that they were no longer private schemes at all.
They became, in essence, state sanctioned and officially approved
pension schemes." Is that your view?
Ms Abraham: No, I do not think
that is my view, but I think I understand the point she is making
and I have tried to make a similar point in terms of the role
that Government took upon itself in relation to the legal and
the policy framework, the role of educator, the role of promoter,
and therefore I would not use that language. I do not think I
would agree with that point as it is articulated. I think I said
somewhere in my remarks this afternoon that the Government was
not a bystander here.
Q68 Chairman: It has to be more than
an educator, does it not? The Government tries vainly to educate
people about all kinds of things all the time and if it must be
held to account for failed educative attempts then, my goodness,
it would be in the dock endlessly. It seems to me what you are
saying is that it provided a kind of Kitemark for these schemes,
which is a very different kind. Did it do that?
Ms Abraham: I think that is right,
it did take upon itself a responsibility which was beyond the
provision of genuine information, I think that is the point, which
is why I said the standard shifts at that point.
Q69 Chairman: I got the impression
reading your report and your response to the Government's response
that you would not have minded nearly so much if the Government
had said, "we think she has got a point but we do not agree
with her recommendations". In ombudsman terms, you would
have found that much more acceptable, would you not?
Ms Abraham: Yes, I would.
Q70 Chairman: What really irked you
was the fact that in rejecting the recommendation, they felt they
had to go on and reject your finding of maladministration?
Ms Abraham: I think what really
"irked me", if that is the term, were statements like
"The Government rejects the findings of maladministration.
The Government does not accept that maladministration occurred.
The Government does not believe the report makes a sustainable
case that maladministration occurred. We cannot accept any of
the findings of maladministration". Actually that is interesting
but unacceptable from the prisoner in the dock, as it has been
described by a Member in Parliament, that actually it is not for
governments to reject findings of maladministration. If they want
to say that no reasonable ombudsman could have reached these findings
and these conclusions, there is a place to say that and it is
a court of law. I do not want to spend a lot of time in court
responding to judicial reviews by Government, but that is the
only place to make that challenge properly it seems to me. I think
the other thing that irked me was the comment that, "The
report fails to demonstrate that decisions taken by individual
scheme members were influenced by the information that Government
did or did not make available". That did seem to me to be
a serious challenge to my judgment, but more importantly to the
credibility of the people who had complained to me. I think that
is where, as I said, my sense of outrage was developed. Then,
they went on to rewrite the judgment and made all sorts of assertions
about things it did not say. All I would expect in these circumstances
is an engagement with what the report says and an acceptance that
the Government has some responsibility here and it should treat
my findings seriously and it should consider my recommendations
seriously. So far, I have not seen that. I think Parliament deserves
a better response. I think these complainants deserve a better
response.
Q71 Chairman: We know that something
terrible has happened here. The question is about the balance
of responsibility for it as well as the remedy. There is also
a reading of recent pension history involved. I wondered if it
would be helpful if I, on behalf of the Committee, wrote to Lord
Turner and asked him for an observation on this. Would that be
helpful, do you think?
Ms Abraham: I think that would
be extremely interesting. I cannot see in any way that it would
be anything other than helpful.
Chairman: I will do it then.
Q72 Mr Prentice: You managed to bring
the Prime Minister into all of this in your report referring to
the Ministerial Code, have we not heard enough of that recently,
and about the bond of trust between British people and their Government.
Then you go on to say that: "citizens should be entitled
to expect that the Government does not mislead them". We
are on page 167. That is like giving the Government a slap in
the face, the Government should not mislead the citizens. My question
is this: if this did in fact take place, if people were misled,
did the Government do it inadvertently or was it quite deliberate,
since you say that they have been misled?
Ms Abraham: I do not think it
is giving the Government a slap in the face.
Mr Prentice: That is my way of putting
it.
Ms Abraham: I am just doing my
job. If you ask me to rehearse a few of the principles of good
administration I would say something about giving people information
which is complete, correct and not misleading. I think the Department
of Work and Pensions' own standard talks about not misleading
as a standard. I do not think that it is particularly controversial
or an extraordinary thing to say that the Government should not
mislead citizens.
Q73 Mr Prentice: It evoked all the
stuff about bond of trust and Ministerial Code and so on. The
Treasury Committee, looking at your report and the Government's
response, have recommended that when the Government gets round
to responding in a full and final response to your report, it
should set out the published estimates of the costs of the various
options for dealing with this issue, including possibly expanding
the Financial Assistance Scheme. You would agree with that. My
question is, what do you expect of the Government in their full
and final report?
Ms Abraham: My reading is it is
going to be full. I think it has already been final but we will
see. I have only seen and heard what you have seen and heard so
I have no inside track on this, I can only wait and see.
Q74 Mr Prentice: We talked about
£15 billion earlier, you would expect the level of detail
to be that the Government would come forward with all the options
for addressing the issue which you have identified.
Ms Abraham: I suppose what I would
hope for is that the Government would address what the report
does say.
Q75 Chairman: In your memorandum
to us relating to the pensions report you say: "this goes
to the heart of the ombudsman system and of Parliamentary scrutiny
of the executive". Are you telling us that we are in a critical
moment in the evolution of the ombudsman system?
Ms Abraham: Well, I suppose I
am in a way, but maybe I should go back from that because I always
think we are making things so terribly loaded really. I think
that there are serious dangers here, not in the debate about recommendations,
I would have been astonished if there had not been a debate about
the recommendations. I think when government officials in final
written responses to me, and to Parliament, say things like, "we
reject the ombudsman's findings of maladministration" they
have crossed a boundary which needs to be pointed out to them.
Chairman: Thank you very much for that.
I think we have had an important and sustained series of exchanges
this afternoon. We shall reflect upon what you have told us and
we shall reflect on where we need to take it next and I am sure
we will see you again before very long. Thank you very much indeed.
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