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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but interventions should be short. It sounds to me as though the hon. Gentleman is making more of a speech.
Mr. Mates: I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will be as brief as I can. My hon. Friend was about to address the specific question of whether the ombudsman is able to carry out the duty that Parliament gave him. I want briefly to quote one example because--
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's intervention is far too long. I cannot allow him to continue.
Mr. Mates: Then I cannot make my point.
Madam Deputy Speaker: No, the hon. Gentleman cannot. That is precisely correct.
Mr. Pawsey: Despite the fact that my hon. Friend was cut off in mid-flow, I understand the essential thrust of his comments. The important point to which he referred was raised also by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson).
My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) draws attention to the number of CSA cases that are reaching the ombudsman. The Select Committee will, as part of its continuing work, be taking evidence from the ombudsman about workload, the time taken to complete investigations, the number of staff and the resources available. I share my hon. Friend's concern. The ombudsman is the citizen's backstop. If the ombudsman is not seen to be performing the duties and responsibilities imposed on him by the House, that is a serious matter.
As the issue is so important, I sought advice from colleagues. The view has been taken that a number of representative cases should identify administrative shortcomings needing to be remedied, and that the resulting improvements to the system should bring general improvement--so that complaints should not have to be referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Make it snappy, Mr. Mates.
Mr. Mates:
I will, Madam Deputy Speaker. Forgive me, but I am raising a fundamental point--and I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will allow me to make it. The ombudsman himself is saying, "I cannot do the job that Parliament gave me to do. I acknowledge that your constituent has a complaint, but I cannot look at it because there are so many of the same type." Where does that leave the ombudsman, in his duty to look after individual cases of maladministration? If he cannot examine a case because it has been raised before, that is denying the purpose for which Parliament established the ombudsman. I hope that my hon. Friend's Committee will address that aspect.
Mr. Pawsey:
My hon. Friend made his point most succinctly. I give him the assurance that the Select Committee that I have the honour to chair will examine that specific matter. His comments emphasise the need for a complaints examiner to be established within the CSA, so that problems will not filter through to the ombudsman but can be resolved within the agency. I believe that I saw my hon. Friend, the Minister, nodding his head sagely in agreement.
As to maladministration and the agency's domination of the ombudsman's case load, complaints concerning the CSA accounted for one third of all those accepted for investigation in 1995. By the end of 1995, 195 cases were being investigated. The ombudsman has now decided to investigate only cases that appear to involve new issues or financial loss. Many other cases suggested maladministration but were not accepted for investigation. In parenthesis, I will observe that the ombudsman's office is not of the largest. It has 55 staff to deal with maladministration cases referred to the ombudsman by Departments, which is fewer than one member of staff for every 1 million of the population.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pawsey:
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is a staunch member of the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner. I am not at all surprised to see the hon. Gentleman in his place, because he is always in attendance at meetings of the Committee.
Mr. Campbell:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments.
Does not the Parliamentary Commissioner's report state that he is extremely concerned at further reductions in staffing levels? If further cuts are made in civil servants in Departments, complaints will become more frequent. If staff are cut in Departments, they will also be cut in the ombudsman's office.
Mr. Pawsey:
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. He is right and that issue is being closely observed by the Select Committee, of which he is an important member. Throughout my time on the Select Committee, which must go back for nine years or so, we have always pressed to ensure that adequate resources exist properly to service the ombudsman's committee. It is important that I put on record the fact that resources have never been denied, and I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree with that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Andrew Mitchell):
I hope that I can satisfy the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) on his point. In the ombudsman's report, he acknowledges the help given to the CSA, in the form of additional staffing, since his first special report. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the agency has got the staffing right.
Mr. Pawsey:
I am enjoying the interventions, but I should make some progress in order to allow other hon. Members to speak.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton suggested, many complaints submitted by Members of Parliament suggest, at face value, maladministration. They were not
accepted because they did not raise new issues and because the ombudsman's resources are finite. Therefore, those complaints do not feature in his report. The House will also understand that it takes time to recruit and train new staff.
The Select Committee was somewhat disconcerted last year to discover that the CSA did not mention the ombudsman in its complaints literature. We wonder how many additional complaints would have been made had the public been aware of the ombudsman's existence and his responsibilities. I believe, and I am sure that I am supported by other hon. Members, that complaints can be regarded as an audit of quality, but when an internal complaints system does not refer to the ombudsman, it is unwise to claim success from the smallness of the number of complaints that find their way to him.
I remind the House that the ombudsman is both impartial and independent. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said, the ombudsman is charged by Parliament itself to investigate complaints about maladministration. He is above party and departmental battles. He has no axe to grind and it is important that the House remembers that.
My second issue is complaints handling. In his recent report, the ombudsman stated:
Mr. Reid--the ombudsman--added, in oral evidence to the Select Committee:
The House will therefore not be surprised to learn that, when we took evidence from Miss Chant, we specifically asked about local complaints handling. She believed that the delegation of case responsibility to local offices would help with the efficient handling of complaints. I was, however, more than a little concerned at the lack of firm measures being advanced to improve complaints handling. Indeed, the failure to deal competently with complaints at an early stage suggests that there should be fresh initiatives within the agency. In my view, the agency should be given a maximum time after which complaints about maladministration will be considered. I look forward specifically to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary's response on that point.
"A particularly disturbing theme in the complaints put to me is the number of individuals who have taken up their grievances with the Child Support Agency in a constructive and reasoned way without getting satisfaction. In some cases, the CSA have had matters under consideration for a very long time without resolving them. In other cases, complaints have simply not been given proper consideration or have been ignored altogether."
"Far too often in the cases I have investigated, they complain to me that they write, they get no reply and when they do get a reply it is generated by a computer that knows nothing about the up-to-date circumstances."
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