Charities Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, on persisting in this. We remain of the view that there is already a statutory body that can investigate complaints of maladministration—the ombudsman. As I said last time, we believe that the ombudsman has many advantages over the Independent Complaints Reviewer, which I shall repeat. In terms of independence and accountability the ombudsman is appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and reports directly to Parliament, as opposed to an appointment by and reporting to the Secretary of State, which is envisaged in the amendment. An apology from the commission may be more valued if it stems from a recommendation of the ombudsman rather than the commission being required to make one via a statutory complaints reviewer. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the ombudsman can recommend any level of redress if the complainant has evidence to show that he or she has experienced quantifiable financial loss directly as a result of the commission’s maladministration. If the commission chose to ignore a recommendation of the ombudsman to provide compensation, the ombudsman would refer the commission to the Select Committee on Public Administration. The ombudsman makes recommendations for substantial redress. Today, the ombudsman has published a report recommending financial redress of £100,000 for complainants against the Department of Transport. That is a substantial sum. A point has been made that the ombudsman will not get involved in cases where the complainant has recourse through the courts. It is important to separate out maladministration from the legal decisions of the commission. Understandably, legal decisions are not within the ombudsman’s remit as there is a route of appeal for those through the courts. That access will be wider through the Charity Appeal Tribunal. However, the ombudsman could look at any maladministration of the commission even in a case that had been decided by a court or a tribunal on a point of law. That point was made very effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, following his conversations. The present non-statutory Independent Complaints Reviewer, Jodi Berg, published her annual report for 2004–05 last month. During that year she conducted 18 reviews covering 110 individual allegations of maladministration against the commission, of which 14 per cent were fully or partially upheld and 86 per cent were not upheld. She acknowledges the significant progress that the commission has made over recent years in improving its services and complaints handling procedures. She also reflects on the need for a statutory independent complaints reviewer and believes that her role is complementary to that of the ombudsman, without seeking to replace the authority or the independence of that office, which is derived directly from Parliament. She states that,"““It is doubtful whether a potentially overlapping office would add anything for the citizen other than confusion . . . During my time as ICR for the Charity Commission, recommendations have resulted in substantial changes to the way in which the Commission carries out its regulatory role, providing greater clarity and consistency of approach””." So—there is progress. We continue to believe that the current arrangements with a non-statutory independent complaints reviewer, backed by the parliamentary ombudsman, provide, on balance, the right approach to the problems that can be incurred or encountered. Having heard that, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, will finally give up on this issue. But that is entirely up to him.