Rebecca Hilsenraft | Westminster Confidential

The EHRC has refused to release the findings of an investigation into the huge breach of the Covid lockdown rules during the pandemic by Rebecca Hilsenrath, now chief executive of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office.

The decision is in contravention of a ruling by John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, who ruled that Mark Benney , who put in the request to his office ,was entitled to answers about the finding of the report but not allowed to see it himself.

The EHRC has confirmed that a report was completed at the time Rebecca Hilsenrath, then its chief exceutive, was suspended by the EHRC as a precautionary measure. She then suddenly resigned only to get a senior job at the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s office almost immediately.

Her breach of Covid rules involved her traveling from her North London home to her country cottage in North Wales where her children also joined her -presumably also in breach of the rules – to spend their Christmas holiday together. She has four children. It was exposed in The Times newspaper.

Baroness Falkner, a crossbench peer and the chair of the EHRC, has used the same argument it deployed unsuccessfully to say that it would not answer questions about the report to protect Rebecca Hilsenrath’s privacy to refuse to publish the finding of the report.

Official Portrait of Baroness Falkner

She has decided not to appeal the decision but Mark Benney has put in his own appeal. It includes the words;” the Commissioner has erred in failing to consider whether the report and supporting documentation are capable of appropriate redaction in order to remove any special category data. Finally, it also follows that material within the report and supporting documentation that is neither personal data nor special category data is properly disclosable according to the overarching logic of the inDecision Notice.”

In my opinion this decision to hide the finding of a report about Rebecca Hilsenrath’s breach of the Covid rules is totally wrong. It may be five years ago but the lockdown meant tens of thousands of people could not move around the country, make trips like hers to celebrate Christmas and were not even able to visit relatives dying in hospitals all over the country.

In my opinion there appears to be a certain class of people who are arrogant enough to think that they are above rules that everybody else in the country is expected to obey. These people are often protected by friends in powerful positions to avoid the consequences that other less privileged people have to suffer from breaking the rules. I am not saying in this particular case this is necessarily so but the failure of public organisations to come clean about the facts in this case can only add to further speculation.

Incidently the Parliamentary Ombudsman website is still silent on any new cases and no date has been fixed yet for the new Ombudsman, Paula Sussex, to join it.

Rebecca Hilsenrath has broken her silence from the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office in a YouTube video on mental health put out by the Ombudsman’s Association on Leadership, Listening and Making Mistakes dealing with mental health issues. She frankly discloses that she suffered four bouts of post natal depression when she had her children and members of her family have suffered mental health problems so she is sympathetic about mentally ill people who are being badly treated by the NHS and other organisations. See the interview below.

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NEW: Since this post was published I have learned that Rebecca Hilsenrath has been awarded an honorary KC and been appointed a member of the Civil Justice Council, chaired by the Master of the Rolls,Sir Geoffrey Vos. She is responsible for advising the judiciary on the use of alternative dispute resolution, where disputes are settled outside the courts. Ironically this would include the demand from CEDAWinLAW to solve the dispute over compensation for 50swomen pensioners which ministers oppose. She was and still is chief executive of the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office when the former ombudsman ,Robert Behrens, recommended compensation for partial maladministration by the DWP. It would be curious to know what her position will be on this if this ever came up.

John Edwards, the Information commissioner, has ruled that the Equality and Human Rights Commission must answer what action it took when it was revealed that its former chief executive, breached Covid rules at the height of the pandemic by driving from north London to her holiday cottage in Wales for a family Christmas in 2020.

The decision is a partial victory for Mark Benny, a dogged campaigner, who sought answers to what action it took when it became publicly known through an article in The Times that she had driven hundreds of miles when there was a ban on any long distance travel as part of the national lockdown.

But the information commissioner has decided not to release a report of an EHRC investigation or correspondence from her because it goes into her private life and might cause unwanted distress.

Rebecca Hilsenrath’s Welsh holiday cottage

However his ruling is significant for a number of reasons. He has had to weigh up public interest in this case versus a person’s right to privacy. And he has come down very firmly that there is a public interest case about how senior public figures conducted themselves during the pandemic. He also ruled that public bodies cannot, as the EHRC did, impose a blanket ban under the privacy section of the Freedom of Information Act, to refuse to confirm or deny anything because it involves personal data.

This could have wider implications since public bodies use this technique where there are controversial appointments or resignations to refuse to provide information because itinvolves personal data

Rebecca Hilsenrath’s case was particularly controversial because she resigned her chief executive’s job at EHRC only to be parachuted into a top position at the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office where since became Interim Ombudsman and chief executive, an equivalent or even better status than she had at the EHRC.

Extraordinarily when Mark Benny pressed the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office on what they knew or whether they took into account of her Covid breach during her appointment, the office said it had lost the papers on her appointment process.

So now the EHRC will have to answer his questions within 30 days or as the Commissioner says in his report “failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.”
The questions he has asked include whether there was a proper investigation into the breach, whether it was completed and what was the outcome. He also wants to know whether she was suspended by the EHRC or put on gardening leave and whether she was dismissed or decided to resign.

All the public had at the time was a terse statement by the EHRC to the press. It said:

“The Equality and Human Rights Commission said they will consider whether further action against its chief executive is needed.
“She has apologised for this error of judgement,” said EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner.
“I will establish all the facts before deciding if any further action is
required.”

Nothing has been heard of this since and it is now known whether it came up again when she was interviewed to be Interim Ombudsman last year.

What the ruling by the Information Commissioner does is say that Mark Benney’s request was legitimate and it was necessary for the information to be released. But he thought this could be done through his questions and it was not a legitimate interest to release the full report because it contained details of her private life.

Interestingly he thought it might throw some more light on what happened at the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s Office. He said “he considers that disclosure of the requested
information would allow further scrutiny of that process.”