Foreword
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I am laying this report before Parliament, under section 10(4) of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967, to share the learning from my investigation of Ms M’s complaint.
Ms M’s story shows how easily, and justifiably, a person’s confidence in government agencies can be lost. It took an investigation by the Ombudsman for the different government agencies involved to accept their responsibilities, put things right for Ms M, and agree that cross-cutting issues would be addressed. I involved the Cabinet Office in the provision of systemic remedy in order to ensure that there is wider learning across government departments.
Ms M complained that, without her knowledge, her personal details were changed in error on one government agency’s computer system and her personal details were then changed across a network of government computer systems that linked the records of HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions. As a consequence of the original mistake, her personal financial information was then sent to her former partner, and her child support entitlement was reassessed and reduced without her participation or knowledge. To compound matters, when Ms M discovered the error and queried how it had happened, none of these public bodies could tell her. Instead of taking responsibility for what had happened, they passed her from one organisation to another. Far from attempting to sort things out and provide Ms M with an assurance that her personal data was secure, each of these bodies denied responsibility for making the mistake.
Ms M understandably found this experience extremely distressing. She was compelled to spend a good deal of time and money ensuring her records were correct, and she still lives with the fear of a recurrence.
This report sets out what was discovered during the investigation of Ms M’s complaint and explains how, I think, the initial error in Ms M’s data occurred, something which none of the public bodies involved was able to establish. As a result of my investigation, I found maladministration and public service failure by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions. I found that these three public bodies were jointly responsible for the injustice experienced by Ms M but I saw no sense in trying to apportion the responsibility for putting things right. Therefore, I recommended that HM Revenue & Customs should take the lead in implementing the recommendations to remedy the injustice to Ms M to ensure that she was not further inconvenienced or distressed by a repeat of the disparate approach previously taken by the public bodies.
My recommendations to remedy the injustice to Ms M included: an apology; a compensation payment of £2,000; confirming to Ms M when a check of Ms M’s information on every database owned by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions was completed; and exploring jointly a solution to Ms M’s concerns about the need to remember passwords.
In order to address the wider, cross-cutting issues identified as a result of my investigation, I recommended that HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions, in discussion with the Cabinet Office, agree a customer-focused protocol to deal with complaints that cross organisational boundaries and arise from the sharing of information between them, and which accords with the practices advocated by the Information Commissioner. I recommended that HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions explain to Ms M, to her Member of Parliament and to me how they intend to take forward this work, and provide a timescale for implementation.
In order to ensure that there is wider learning across other government departments with networked computer systems, I recommended that the Cabinet Office takes steps to ensure that lessons are learnt from Ms M’s experience and from my investigation and that appropriate guidance is disseminated to all government departments. I recommended that the Cabinet Office provides an update on progress to Ms M, to her Member of Parliament and to me.
My recommendations were accepted in full by the Permanent Secretary of HM Revenue & Customs, on behalf of HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Commissioner, on behalf of the Child Support Agency, the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions and the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Head of the Home Civil Service.
As I say in the conclusion, I hope 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. These lessons are not only about information sharing between government departments and agencies. In line with my Principles of Good Administration, public bodies need to learn to get their public administration right, to be customer focused, be open and accountable and to work together to put things right when mistakes happen. Unless all this happens, public bodies run the risk of making other people feel the way Ms M told me she feels: that she will never be able to trust a government agency again.
Ann Abraham
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
January 2011
