Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I am not so sure about this amendment. It is not so much that I am treading on my dreams but I am treading on somebody else's interpretations of my dreams. The difficulty associated with investigating practices, as proposed, is that it almost establishes the office of the ombudsman commission as an inspectorate. There are two different functions to be considered, namely, that of investigating complaints and that of ascertaining how the whole operation is managed. The two should be separated although it is sometimes difficult to do so. If the ombudsman commission believes a complaint arises from a particular practice or means of dealing with certain circumstances, it is quite free to recommend a change. However, if one simply gives the commission a charter to investigate practices, one could be letting people loose all over the place, or there could be requests for them to be let loose all over the place. This might confuse management. It is the job of management to manage and it should be left to do that job. It should be accounted for in some way other than through the investigation of complaints.