My findings of maladministration and injustice
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Maladministration
The shared responsibility of HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions
None of the departments and agencies involved in this complaint accepted responsibility for what has happened to Ms M until the Ombudsman became involved. They did not accept responsibility for the presence of the erroneous data; they did not demonstrate a willingness to investigate matters further; and they appear to have been unable to rectify the problem they had created. While public bodies have improved information assurance (as a consequence of the Cabinet Office’s initiatives set out at Annex B) since October 2007, when Ms M first discovered the problem, the focus of that work appears to have been largely on preventing a breach, rather than on dealing with the consequences.
My first concern is that the network of computer systems used by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions can make changes to an individual’s personal data without the individual’s knowledge or consent, yet an interrogation of that same network of systems cannot now locate the source of any errors made. It seems that we will never be able to establish for certain what went wrong and why. While I recognise this may be a rare occurrence and that the original mistake was likely to have been the result of an inputting error, I am concerned that there is no provision for users to identify retrospectively and rectify those human errors which will occur from time to time. This does not sit well with the Principle of ‘Being open and accountable’.
My second concern is that, at some point during the time Ms M was pursuing her complaint, it might have been possible to find out what had happened and to explain to Ms M why things went wrong. That opportunity was missed. None of the agencies involved was willing or able to take on responsibility for investigating Ms M’s complaint holistically, so the matter remained unresolved.
While HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions have computer systems that are networked and communicate with one another, the agencies themselves clearly do not. No single agency took responsibility for looking at those problems that cut across their organisational boundaries and their respective computer systems. Each agency focused on their own territory and their responsibility for the maintenance and interrogation of their own systems. Once data (incorrect or otherwise) left their system, they took no further interest. Each of the agencies blamed another for the original mistake and took the view that, as the mistake had been disseminated by ‘the system’ it was not their responsibility and there was nothing they could do.
This failure by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions to work together in order to identify what had gone wrong and to resolve Ms M’s complaint falls far short of the Ombudsman’s Principles of ‘Being customer focused’ and ‘Putting things right’. It amounts to maladministration and public service failure.
The particular responsibilities of HM Revenue & Customs
The Tax Credit Office
The Tax Credit Office found, during the course of our investigation, that a department within HM Revenue & Customs had received a paper document on 7 December 2006 relating to Ms M and Mr A’s joint claim and that this may have been linked to the change to Ms M’s address. It is not clear why this came to light only after Ms M had brought her complaint to the Ombudsman, rather than when Ms M first complained to the Tax Credit Office. Nevertheless, if HM Revenue & Customs had kept that document or made a proper note of it on their computer system, that might have explained what had gone wrong and given Ms M the reassurance she sought that the problem had been rectified and would not happen again.
The Tax Credit Office sent two documents intended for Ms M to Mr A – her final award notice for her joint claim and her annual declaration and renewal pack for her single claim. These documents contained personal information about Ms M and should not have been sent to Mr A. The Tax Credit Office appear to have been confused about what they actually sent to Mr A. I can see no evidence that the Tax Credit Office have apologised or accepted responsibility for sending Ms M’s personal data inappropriately to Mr A.
When Ms M made the Tax Credit Office aware that there was a problem with her address, they did not take the necessary action to correct her address details. If they had done so, this would have corrected their database and, consequently, the Child Support Agency’s computer system. If the Tax Credit Office had acted sooner, the Child Support Agency would not have sent information about Ms M’s child maintenance to Mr A’s address.
When the Tax Credit Office arranged a meeting at Ms M’s local Enquiry Centre for her to sort out her complaint, the local office initially told her they could not help her. As the Tax Credit Office had arranged the appointment for Ms M, they should have known what her complaint was about and been ready to help her. I have seen no acknowledgement or apology for this poor customer service from the Tax Credit Office or the local Enquiry Centre.
Once Ms M had given details of her complaint, it took the Tax Credit Office over a month to contact her. It is not clear why it took them so long, and it was far in excess of their commitment to her to reply within 15 days. When the Tax Credit Office did contact Ms M, they promised her compensation but failed to send it until February 2008, some three months later. They have offered no explanation for this.
Ideally, when the Tax Credit Office first learnt in February 2007 that their computer system held incorrect data about Ms M and that they had inadvertently disclosed that data to a third party, they should have rectified Ms M’s records immediately. They should have told her about the problem, apologised for the error (regardless of which department was responsible for it), and assured her that they would rectify the situation without inconveniencing her further. The Tax Credit Office should then have notified all of the linked departmental systems of the error and taken steps to establish how it had occurred. That did not happen. Nor did it happen when the Child Support Agency discovered the error in October 2007.
The Tax Credit Office’s disclosure of Ms M’s personal information to Mr A, their failure to amend Ms M’s address details after they became aware they were incorrect, their failure to investigate Ms M’s complaint in full, and their poor complaint handling all amount to maladministration.
The National Insurance Contributions Office
When the National Insurance Contributions Office first looked into Ms M’s complaint they said that their National Insurance Recording System showed the correct address; this was wrong. When asked to look at the complaint again by Ms M’s Member of Parliament, they looked at data for the wrong period. Had they looked at the computer records for the relevant period of time, the audit trail might have revealed the origin of the incorrect amendment. As the two-year deadline for obtaining an audit trail from the computer system has now passed, we will never know whether a more extensive search could have found the source of the problem and provided Ms M with the assurance she seeks.
It is also unclear why the National Insurance Recording System shows no history of the incorrect changes to Ms M’s address. It appears that this data has been removed, but the National Insurance Contributions Office is unable to say why or by whom. I am concerned that such data can be removed without any record or explanation.
I am further concerned that the National Insurance Contributions Office gave incorrect information to Ms M in their letter of 18 September 2008 when they said that Mr A’s address was used only in respect of her joint claim. While I appreciate that this information may have been given to them by the Tax Credit Office, it was not correct.
This combination of errors in the National Insurance Contributions Office’s handling of Ms M’s complaint amounts to maladministration.
Injustice
This situation has caused Ms M stress, worry and upset. She has had to spend time making telephone calls, writing letters and visiting various government bodies to try and sort out these problems. Ms M told us that she had to take days off work to visit her Member of Parliament, her local Jobcentre Plus office and the HM Revenue & Customs’ Enquiry Centre, and to make telephone calls she did not feel she could make from her place of work.
The Tax Credit Office’s disclosure of Ms M’s confidential financial information to the very person from whom she had sought to distance herself because of her doubts about his financial probity caused her a great deal of anxiety and distress. Ms M has told us she feels humiliated that Mr A knows she is in financial difficulty and that he has had the opportunity to see information about her salary and bank account.
The local Enquiry Centre’s failure to deal with Ms M properly, when she took time off work to discuss the matter with them in person, and the National Insurance Contributions Office’s failure to engage fully in helping Ms M resolve her difficulty, compounded her distress and caused her to incur unnecessary costs.
The Tax Credit Office’s failure to supply Ms M with the information she had requested, their failure to take responsibility for the fact that they had twice sent information intended for Ms M to Mr A’s address, their exceptionally poor complaint handling, their failure to work with the Child Support Agency or the Department for Work and Pensions to resolve her data assurance problem, and their failure to correct Ms M’s details once they knew there was a problem (which resulted in the Child Support Agency sending important correspondence to the wrong address) also caused Ms M distress.
When Ms M asked for a copy of the letter the Child Support Agency had sent to Mr A’s address, the Child Support Agency took five months to send it to her. That, in turn, delayed the reassessment of her child maintenance. And the Child Support Agency’s failure to approach HM Revenue & Customs or the Department for Work and Pensions about the complaint, despite their apparent awareness that the erroneous data had come from one of those organisations’ systems, meant that Ms M had to take time off work to remedy the situation in private, inconveniencing her even more. While Ms M’s child support payments have not been delayed by the Child Support Agency’s tardiness (because her child support maintenance payments from the non-resident parent were in arrears anyway), I do not think that the Child Support Agency’s £25 compensation payment was anywhere near sufficient acknowledgement of the extent of inconvenience they had caused her.
The Department for Work and Pensions clearly took Ms M’s enquiries about the erroneous information seriously at a local level. However, their failure to accept responsibility for the information about her held on, and propagated by, their old database (which was still active during the period relevant to Ms M’s case) and their failure to take a proactive role in resolving matters alongside HM Revenue & Customs and the Child Support Agency, further contributed to Ms M’s anxiety and distress, and caused her further inconvenience and expense.
Ms M has suffered significant injustice in the form of expense, inconvenience and distress as a consequence of maladministration by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions.
Ms M is also suffering an ongoing injustice as a consequence of maladministration by HM Revenue & Customs, the Child Support Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions. Ms M told us that her ultimate objective in pursuing her complaint was to have peace of mind that the source of the problem has been found and resolved so that she can be assured the same problem will not happen again. She says that currently, these problems are always in the back of her mind. She is worried that when Mr A moves house again, her address will be changed incorrectly to his and she will experience the same difficulties all over again. Ms M is, understandably, particularly frustrated that her main objective in pursuing her complaint cannot now be met, namely to understand what went wrong and by doing so, to know that it will not happen again. Without this understanding, Ms M continues to live with the uncertainty of what might happen if Mr A moves house again.
I have found that Ms M has suffered injustice as a consequence of maladministration and that that injustice has not been remedied. I turn now to my recommendations for remedy.
