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Sixth Report for Session 1998-99
Selected Cases—October 1998 to March 1999
Section 10(4) of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 empowers me to lay before each House of Parliament such reports with respect to my functions as I think fit.
I now lay before Parliament the following summaries and edited texts of 14 selected case reports out of 193 investigations completed between 1 October 1998 and 31 March 1999. This is in accordance with my past practice. The case reports include some issued under authority delegated by me. The pronoun 'I' in the relevant summaries and texts refers to the member of staff concerned and not to me.
It will be seen that in one instance, case number C.181/98, I have departed from my and my predecessors' usual practice in that the case report, unlike the others I am laying, has not been anonymised. So the name of the complainant concerned, Mr Ashton, is being made public. I stress that this is in accordance with Mr Ashton's preferences and with his full and informed consent, freely given. In such circumstances, but only in such circumstances, and provided that the interests of third parties will not be jeopardised, it seems to me that there is little to be gained and much to be lost by my not abiding by the complainant's own preference. If a third party's legitimate interests might be affected (as they could be, for example, in cases concerning disputes relating to child maintenance), different considerations apply.
There is one further innovation. In addition to the full summaries and texts of the 14 selected cases referred to above, I am also including in this report brief anonymised summaries of the other cases completed by my Office during February and March 1999. I shall be adopting a similar approach in future volumes of selected cases, in order that at least brief details of all the investigations my Office has undertaken should be available on the public record. (It was only in February 1999 that I decided to adopt that new approach. Future selected case volumes will therefore contain many more such abbreviated and anonymised case summaries.)
M S BUCKLEY
Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration
July 1999
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