New Petitions

We will now consider eight petitions together, which all relate to the review of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and contain identical wording and information. PE1342 was brought by Phyllis and Robert French, PE1343 by Sandra Smith, PE1344 by Phillip Hawthorne, PE1345 by James Smith, PE1346 by William Whiteside, PE1347 by Christina Cumming, PE1348 by Mr and Mrs Corbett, and PE1349 by Iris Innes.The petitions call on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to commission an independent review of the SPSO to make it more accountable for its performance, including the extent to which its investigations are fair and robust, and to widen its remit, so that it can enforce recommendations that it makes following investigations of the actions of public bodies. Alex Neil MSP is with us this afternoon and would like to speak to the petitions.

Thank you, convener. A substantial number of other people could probably have submitted similar petitions. There is a letter of support for the petitions from Murdo Fraser MSP, which is based on his experience with constituents. I know that Michael Matheson MSP is also supportive. I have spoken informally to others who hold the same view.In some cases, the ombudsman has found in favour of the petitioners. The petitions are not sour grapes—they reflect a more fundamental concern about the performance and powers of the ombudsman’s office. I will give one or two examples of how lacking in robustness investigations have been. Unfortunately, they are not isolated examples.It took three and half years for one petitioner’s case to be resolved. Even at the end of that period, the final report was so full of factual inaccuracies that, in her view, it was not worth the paper it was written on. In another case, which was a planning matter, the ombudsman refused to investigate the matter because “it is not the job of a local government planning official to check that the papers going to the planning committee are accurate”. That is a farcical statement by any standard.When another serious case involving a health matter was investigated with one health board, a number of recommendations were made to prevent the same thing happening again. However, a year later, in the same ward of the same hospital in the same health board area, exactly the same thing happened. The ombudsman’s recommendations were not implemented and nothing was done about the lack of implementation, in spite of the fact that that was brought to the ombudsman’s attention.I could go on all day with examples that show that, in my view and in the view of other MSPs and the petitioners, the ombudsman’s office too often fails in its duty and fails to perform adequately. Given that the Parliament spends just under £3.5 million a year to fund the ombudsman’s office, we need a far better return on our money, especially in these days of constraint. To quote one of the petitioners, it is not worth a farthing in terms of the quality of service that petitioners have received.To be fair to the ombudsman, its powers are more limited here than is the case in other countries. That applies both to the circumstances in which it can investigate complaints—which are confined to administrative errors and failure to deliver a service, and do not include injustices that public bodies are alleged to have inflicted on people, as is the case in many other countries—and to the power to implement its recommendations, which is limited. However, the ombudsman is not using effectively the powers that it has. The other big issue is that the ombudsman cannot investigate an incident that did not happen in the previous 12 months, even if the incident happened only 15 or 18 months ago and there was a good reason why it did not to come to the ombudsman earlier.We must bear in mind the fact that the ombudsman is the last resort for people. Most people do not have the money to take public bodies to court, especially if the public body concerned threatens to charge to them its legal expenses, as well as their own, if they lose. People of modest income really rely on the ombudsman to sort out problems that arise. To be frank, the ombudsman is not performing to anything like the required standard. The petitioners, Murdo Fraser, Michael Matheson, other MSPs, many other people who have used the ombudsman and I are strongly of the view that it is time to have a fairly fundamental look at the ombudsman’s performance and powers, with a view to getting far greater return on the £3.5 million of taxpayers’ money that it uses up every year.

Do members have any questions or any suggestions on how we should take the petition forward?

Mr Neil is right about the situation with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. In the Local Government and Communities Committee, we received a report from the ombudsman. When the issue of the ombudsman’s powers came up during that exchange, the ombudsman made it clear that a situation had arisen in which he would have liked to have named a particular local authority—he did not say which—but the powers to enforce his recommendations were lacking. When the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman was established, the Parliament or Government did not put in place the powers to ensure that the ombudsman’s recommendations were acted on.Mr Neil is right that people genuinely think that the ombudsman can resolve their issues and get answers, if not solutions, to the problems that they have encountered in dealing with public bodies, but they find that, even when the ombudsman’s recommendations are quite strong, the recommendations do not need to be implemented. Public bodies can note the recommendations without implementing them in full. Given that issue with the ombudsman’s powers, I welcome today’s debate as allowing us to take that issue forward to ensure that people can get some satisfaction from public bodies that are supposed to represent and protect them by taking decisive action against public bodies or individuals.I support the idea that we should approach not just the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman but the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and the Scottish Government to ask whether there has been any review of the SPSO’s remit and powers to ensure that its recommendations are implemented. As Mr Neil and the petitioners have identified, that process might need to look at whether the ombudsman is fulfilling its remit and whether it is delivering what the people of Scotland expect.

The petitioners have done a great public service in lodging the petitions. The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman should be a people’s champion. Someone who came to my office told me that they would go to “The Judge” column in the Sunday Mail before they would go back to the ombudsman. It would be in everyone’s interest, including that of the ombudsman’s office, to review the work and remit of the ombudsman so that we can give people confidence in what the ombudsman does.Perhaps the most interesting suggestion is about enforcement. In the Public Audit Committee, of which I am a member, we often talk about how our committee and the Auditor General can make recommendations but that does not mean that they will be enforced. Indeed, a petition from Govanhill Housing Association that we will reconsider later today is about whether the housing legislation that has been strengthened will be enforced. When people go through what they go through to get to that final stage of getting satisfaction from the ombudsman’s judgment, only for that then not to be enforced, how does that make them feel? How does that give people confidence in the service?As Alex Neil said, times are tight financially. Given that we spend more than £3 million on the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman every year, we need to ensure that every single penny of that money is working for the people of Scotland.I support the proposal that we write to the various bodies that have been mentioned. In writing to the ombudsman, we should ask whether it would welcome the ability to enforce its recommendations and find out its thoughts about what the petitioners are calling for.

Do members have other points? The petitions will be continued. The Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body—15:30

Forgive me, convener—I thought that another member was lined up to speak. I am a bit slow. Can I take us back a few decades? When ombudsmen—a Scandinavian import—were first mentioned, the idea was that an ombudsman would have no powers other than investigative powers. An ombudsman would not provide a court of appeal, but he would have a status in his society whereby he was not ignored and—incidentally—he would not make the daft comments that Mr Neil described.The original idea was that the ombudsman would investigate something and, if he pointed out malpractice, people would say, “Yeah—sorry. Got it wrong. Let’s put it right.” At the end of that, enforcement powers would not be needed. If we ask for enforcement powers, we must recognise—if my memory is right—that we will change the nature of the beast. That worries me, because it will mean in effect building another layer of a kind of court of appeal. In any legal or semi-legal system, we should try to avoid that, because it just means that the persistent litigant has somewhere else to go and that it all gets lost in the churn. I am concerned that we should not lose sight of the concept and try to turn it into something else.It is clear that there is much dissatisfaction with what has gone on—we are all aware of that. Something needs to change, but I am not sure whether that necessarily applies to the enforcement powers. Perhaps the width of the investigative powers or simply the way in which the job is done by people—although I do not want to be personal—needs to change.

Committee members might hold a range of views, but the committee seems to agree that we should continue the petitions and seek further information that will allow the petitions to be brought back for discussion.

Thank you, convener and members.