Summary of the General Public Survey
Overall
The first question asked of the general public was:
If you wanted to complain about a government department, how likely would you be to use the Parliamentary Ombudsman service?
The breakdown of responses was as follows:
| Response | Number of responses | Percentage |
| Very likely | 313 | 15% |
| Fairly likely | 561 | 27% |
| Neither likely or unlikely | 393 | 19% |
| Fairly unlikely | 332 | 16% |
| Very unlikely | 358 | 17% |
| Don’t know | 112 | 5% |
Overall, 42 per cent of the general public said they were likely to use the Parliamentary Ombudsman and 33 per cent said they would be unlikely to do so.
All respondents were subsequently asked:
Knowing that your complaint must be put forward by an MP, does this make you more likely, less likely, or does it make no difference to the likelihood of you using this service?
19 per cent of the public said they would be less likely to use the Parliamentary Ombudsman because their complaint had to be put forward by an MP.
19 per cent of the public are be less likely to use the Parliamentary Ombudsman because of the MP filter
Q: Knowing that your complaint must be put forward by an MP, does this make you more likely, less likely, or does it make no difference to the likelihood of you using this service?
