Increasing calls for public inquiry into pandemic management

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is calling on the government to give clarity about its plans for a robust and independent lessons-learned exercise into the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Ombudsman says that we begin to learn from any mistakes made in the handling of the crisis, and has therefore written to the government asking it to share its thinking about the scope of any future inquiry and other reviews that it plans to establish.

Rob Behrens has emphasised that any review or national inquiry should reflect the real experiences of those who used public services, including the NHS, during the pandemic. He is encouraging people to feed back to the NHS and other public bodies if they have concerns about the service they received and bring their complaint to him if it is not resolved by the local complaints process.

Ombudsman Rob Behrens said: “Complaining when something has gone wrong should not be about criticising doctors, nurses or other frontline public servants, who have often been under extraordinary pressure dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. It is about identifying where things have gone wrong systemically and making sure lessons are learned so mistakes are not repeated.”

He also said: “Despite my repeated calls since taking office, the government has failed to provide me with the powers available to most other national Ombudsman around the world to launch an investigation without first receiving a complaint. It’s really important, therefore, that if people have concerns about the service they have experienced they do complain to the public body and then come to my office if needed. Otherwise other people may experience the same failings.”

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman paused work on NHS complaints on 26 March to enable the NHS to focus on tackling the coronavirus pandemic. From 1 July, he is reopening this part of his service.