Email from Sir Alex Allan revealing problem removed from Parliamentary website after I made a press inquiry
Parliament and the Health Service will not have a new permanent Ombudsman from April because the Prime Minister has delayed approving a new replacement who anyway cannot start work at the office because he or she has to give notice to leave their present job.
Details of the crisis at the office are revealed in an email sent on January 29 from Sir Alex Allan, a senior non executive member of the board of the Ombudsman’s office, to William Wragg, Tory chair of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC).
Sir Alex is a former high flying civil servant who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee, and was the Prime Minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards until 2020 when he resigned after Boris Johnson refused to accept his report on Priti Patel, the former home secretary, concluding that her behaviour was bullying.
The email pleads with William Wragg to contact Downing Street to resolve the problem as a matter of urgency.
His email warns:
“As a corporation sole, the organisation cannot operate without an Ombudsman in post. Any delay to the appointment puts the organisation at considerable risk. In particular because key casework decisions could not be taken it puts at risk all of the work to reduce the queue and improve service to complainants. Clarity of the timeline for both the permanent and interim Ombudsman
appointments is therefore pressing.”
A pre-appointment hearing - part of the normal appointment process - had been pencilled in by PACAC to quiz the new Ombudsman but that has been pit back and there is no date for a future hearing. The page announcing the future hearing on the website is now blank.
He goes on: “”I am pleased that the Panel, led by Philippa Helme, has identified a preferred candidate but I am concerned about the apparent delays since then. We have yet to receive confirmation that the preferred candidate has been agreed by the Prime Minister. “
Sir Alex says the board’s preferred solution is to appoint an interim Ombudsman and suggests Rebecca Hilsenrath, the current chief executive who moved there from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, would be the ideal candidate.
But Whitehall has not even approved this. He writes: “We have yet to receive confirmation of this, despite the urgency, which is making it difficult for the organisation to properly plan for leadership change.”
The crisis facing the Ombudsman’s Office raises a whole of questions which I tried to put to them.
This includes questions like whether Rebecca Hilsenrath, if appointed as an interim, will be able to announce case decisions affecting complaints about hospitals and the NHS, or will they have to wait until they have a permanent appointment?
From Sir Alex’s letter it is also clear if neither people are approved by Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, the office would cease to function altogether until this was sorted out.
The impasse could also affect the timing of the publication of the final report by the outgoing Ombudsman, Rob Behrens, on maladministration in 50s women’s delayed pensions. WASPI have been waiting years for its publication and have seen the draft report which has already been leaked on this website. See the blog here.
A PHSO spokesperson said:
“The process to appoint a new Ombudsman is ongoing. We are in discussions about interim arrangements should they be needed. Our important service for the public continues.”
A spokesperson for PACAC said the committee could not comment but the original pre appointment hearing had been scheduled for last month but because they had not had confirmation from the Cabinet Office that the government had approved the appointment no date was fixed. The email should not have published on their website which is why it was taken down. This suggests that Rishi Sunak has been delaying a decision to approve the appointment for weeks.
For those interested the text of the email is published below:
From the Senior Non-Executive, Sir Alex Allan KCB
Sent by Email Only: pacac@parliament.uk
29 January 2024
Dear Mr Wragg,
I am writing to convey my concerns about the slippage in the timetable to appoint a new
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) and to ask for your support, as Chair of the
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, in raising these concerns with No 10.
I am pleased that the Panel, led by Philippa Helme, has identified a preferred candidate but I am
concerned about the apparent delays since then. We have yet to receive confirmation that the
preferred candidate has been agreed by the Prime Minister. That meant that the planned preappointment scrutiny hearing had to be cancelled and has not been refixed.
I am aware that, due to the preferred candidate’s notice period, there will be a need to appoint an
interim Ombudsman and that the view remains that this should be Rebecca Hilsenrath, Chief
Executive Officer at PHSO. We have yet to receive confirmation of this, despite the urgency, which
is making it difficult for the organisation to properly plan for leadership change.
As a corporation sole, the organisation cannot operate without an Ombudsman in post. Any delay to
the appointment puts the organisation at considerable risk. In particular because key casework
decisions could not be taken it puts at risk all of the work to reduce the queue and improve service
to complainants. Clarity of the timeline for both the permanent and interim Ombudsman appointments is therefore pressing,
I have written to Baroness Neville-Rolfe to convey these concerns and I would be grateful if you
would consider raising them with the Prime Minister’s office.
Yours sincerely,
Sir Alex Allan
Senior Non-Executive Director
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Westminster Confidential 
It makes you wonder if anyone wants to take over the ‘hot seat’ Behrens has left a lot of unfinished busines.
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Well, I’m currently awaiting the outcome of an Ombudsman decision regarding actions taken, or not taken, by the EHRC when Hilsenrath was in charge there. It’s a mystery to me how she ever got appointed in the first place after she resigned from the EHRC following proven lockdown breaches. She’s unsuitable even to be interim Ombudsman. Another instance of the revolving door approach to highly paid “establishment” jobs.
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Not to much of a mystery to me it looked as you say she had connections to get out after the Times exposed her breach of lockdown
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This should be a relatively simple process. After all, the government knew the maximum tenure of an Ombudsman is 7 years by law. What I don’t understand is why the letter from Sir Alex was removed from the committee’s website rather than additionally publish their own response in the interest of openness and transparency. There are many who have approached the Ombudsman service only to find it is not fit for purpose by any reasonable investigative standard. This is no way to push the 50’s women pension scandal into the long grass
ITV commissioning editors please note.New television programme needed:
“Mr. Hencke v the Ombudsman”
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Perhaps PACAC might take pity on all us silly people who go to PHSO expecting a Fair and Just hearing only to find there’s no such thing…
Maybe PACAC are going to close PHSO down and save the money….to repair pot holes…..😀 Oh no Richie Sunak is going to come and fill in my potholes. He said he would when he cancelled HS2
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What a shambles! It mustn’t be forgotten that the current Ombudsman extended his tenure for 2 years partly to provide the government with enough time to find a replacement. And now, 2 years later, with weeks to go before his departure, there is no certainty regarding his replacement and no urgency to address the issue. A classic example of government incompetence and parliamentary inaction.
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Its all cronyism and corruption in this grubby country. I took a complaint about an NHS Trust to the Ombudsman, they were going to uphold it based upon independent expert advice. But then the Ombudsman colluded with the Trust’s CEO to change the report into one that didn’t uphold my complaint. Its open corruption: https://patientcomplaintdhcftdotcom.wordpress.com/
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Just seen this as posted today on the PACAC website as latest news. “PACAC members visited Berlin on 31st January and 1st February as part of their inquiries into Civil Service Leadership and Reform and Devolution Capability in Whitehall”.
Lovely group picture of the members on the website.
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Well, the current one is about as good as a chocolate teapot. People here have issues that are outstanding from the preferred interim Ombudsperson at EHRC. All the offwatts, offgenms, PHSOs seem to have had their time…..none of them seem to have any real teeth. Nor protection for public. Sad fiasco….
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Thanks for the article.
Didnt Alex Allen investigate Julie Mellor who was then obliged to leave her role as Ombudsman?
Quote from email you have shared:-
‘Sir Alex says the board’s preferred solution is to appoint an interim Ombudsman and suggests Rebecca Hilsenrath, the current chief executive who moved there from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, would be the ideal candidate.
R Hilsenrath appears to have been caught and publicly outed as a rule breaker during Lockdown.
It would be helpful to hear from Allen why this should be disregarded.
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The PHSO took two years to produce a grossly inadequate adjudication on my complaint about the EHRC and Hilsenrath, by which time the latter was ensconced in her lucrative position as Director of Strategy and Communications at the Ombudsman. I then requested a formal review (in September 2022). One of the investigators then seems to have lied to me for about six months about the progress of the review, then admitted that she had “inadvertently” failed to create an electronic alert for the review team. During that period Hilsenrath was promoted to CEO. I received £500 compensation for the cock up, which I donated to race equality and disability charities. Several months later I am still waiting for a formal review adjudication, with the reviewer citing excessive workloads and a lack of resources. The review should have been done and dusted a year ago. It’s tempting to conclude that Hilsenrath’s involvement is acting as a brake on the Ombudsman’s process but I have no direct evidence of that, and it has been categorically denied by another Ombudsman functionary…
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Once again, total lack of strategic and forward planning, as is now the norm in Broken Britain – other examples: the pandemic, aging population, which required a gross act of widespread discrimination against women (BTW this country’s biggest example of government-sponsored injustice). For a long time now the people the Ombudsman service is supposed to protect have known this consumer watchdog has been relegated to a lapdog: no teeth, eager to please it’s real masters (government, companies) and frightened to tackle actual problems which may require more than a ‘pay-off’. They should be disbanded and a body formed which tries to live up to its mission.
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Just wondering if Alan Brown M.P would have any influence with his 10 minute bill he has submitted about womens pension payouts, seen it on a news feed
Thanks Paul Minshall
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