Work of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

• Parliament TV: Work of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
• Inquiry: Work of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
• Public Administration Select Committee

Witnesses

• Dame Julie Mellor DBE, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
• Mick Martin, Managing Director, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

At this session, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) holds its annual scrutiny session with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), Dame Julie Mellor. The Committee will hear from Dame Julie about her work in 2013/14 and her strategy for the continuing operation of the service.

The session will also form part of the Committee’s inquiry into Parliament’s Ombudsman Service, in which Members will discuss with PHSO what is needed to deliver a modern ombudsman service for the public.

During the session the Committee will ask Dame Julie for her views on an article published on 31 October which suggests that NHS should follow the lead of aviation and other safety-critical industries and establish an independent safety investigation agency.

Quote from the Chair

Bernard Jenkin, PASC Chair said:

As Chair of the Select Committee responsible for the examination for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, I read today’s article, Learning from failure: the need for independent safety investigation in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine with great interest. There are a number of thoughtful ideas in the article that I will be raising with Dame Julie in our public hearing on 10 November. I understand that this idea is gathering significant support, but it would have an impact on the scope of PHSO’s work in the health service, which investigates medical incidents as ‘maladministration’.

Submit written evidence

We invite those who wish to do so to submit written evidence about the quality of the work of the Ombudsman’s service. Please note that the Committee is unable to take up individual cases and may not publish evidence that references personal data.

Particular issues to be explored may include:

• the challenges faced by PHSO in achieving the aims of the 2013-18 strategy;
• how investigations are undertaken by PHSO;
• the impact of PHSO’s strategy to investigate more complaints, and
• the public perception and experience of PHSO.

Learning from failure: the need for independent safety investigation in healthcare, by Carl Macrae and Charles Vincent, was published 31 October 2014 by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Follow the oral evidence session on Twitter: #PHSO