Introduction
The Parliamentary Ombudsman aims to provide an independent, high quality complaint handling service that rights individual wrongs, drives improvements in public services and informs public policy.
As set out in the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967, which provides the legislative basis for the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s operation, people can only submit complaints to the Parliamentary Ombudsman through a Member of Parliament (MP). This process is often referred to as the ‘MP filter’.
This report contains a summary of key points from two surveys of the public’s opinions about the MP filter which were commissioned by the Parliamentary Ombudsman in 2010.
The first, known as the general public survey, sought the opinions of 2,070 members of the general public in Great Britain.1 The survey was performed by British Market Research Bureau on behalf of PHSO and consisted of 2,070 face to face interviews which took place between 12 and 16 November 2010.
The second, known as the customer survey, sought the opinions of 90 individuals who had approached the Parliamentary Ombudsman with a complaint about a government body or agency and had completed the local complaints process, but without the required MP referral. The survey was performed by IFF Research on behalf of the Parliamentary Ombudsman using computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) technology between 10 and 21 November 2010.
The objective of conducting the surveys was to gain better understanding of the impact the MP referral has on the complaints process, whether it makes our service more or less accessible, and whether the public would prefer to have direct access to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
1 Although the Parliamentary Ombudsman has a UK-wide remit, this survey was only carried out in Great Britain.
