Conclusion
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I have upheld Ms M’s complaint about HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions. I found that their individual and collective failings when handling her personal information amounted to both maladministration and a failure of public service and that as a consequence Ms M suffered, and continues to suffer, injustice.
HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Cabinet Office have agreed to all my recommendations and the Secretary of the Cabinet and the Head of the Home Civil Service has assured me that the lessons learnt from Ms M’s experience will be captured and shared across government.
Ms M has had a difficult and distressing experience and I am not surprised that she says she will never feel able to trust a government agency again. It is true that she will never know for sure how the error happened – but I do think that my investigation has been able to give her a very likely explanation. I can say with confidence that my investigation has uncovered no evidence to indicate that Ms M’s and Mr A’s records are linked on any live claim or live record on any of the computer systems managed by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency or the Department for Work and Pensions. I hope, therefore, that my report will go some way towards giving Ms M the peace of mind she seeks that her experience will not be repeated. Of course, the real test of that will be in how well the public bodies involved learn lessons from Ms M’s experience and use them to put things right for the future.
Ann Abraham
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
January 2011
