Mr. Peter Tyndall:

The opportunity for the committee to refer cases to the Ombudsman is a helpful one. Sometimes the cases would sit more easily in an investigative mode where somebody can look into the detail, check the files and so on. It might be easier for my office, rather than a committee, to deal with such cases. We have the opportunity, if a complaint is not made directly to us, to use own initiative powers to open a complaint. That is a useful way of dealing with things.

Whatever has happened that caused an injustice to them, some people reach a point where no resolution is possible so they will come to my office, come to me as Information Commissioner or go to a variety of places. Sometimes one can well understand why somebody is distressed and why they feel a sense of injustice but one can see that nobody has done anything wrong. For example, we get a lot of farmers who are unhappy about changes to agricultural grants which cause people who had payments for many years to stop getting them. It is because of changes to policy that this happens, and not because anybody is guilty of maladministration. It is a tricky one. It is helpful to give a sense of finality and the role of an ombudsman is to be the final stage in a complaint process or the petitions committee can fill that role. It is not helpful to have cases shuttling between us. We would be unlikely to accept a complaint the committee had considered. Having the Standing Order is helpful in that way.

A way we could think about moving forward in terms of cases that cut across both of us is by having a memorandum of understanding between the committee and the relevant Ombudsman offices which sets out in some detail who would take which complaints or how we would interact over complaints. If the committee thinks that is helpful, there are examples elsewhere we could provide to the committee as the basis for progress. We could work with the clerks on that.