www.publicinvolvement.org.uk

It is the open season for annual reports from the big celebs of the consumer world. We talked about Walter Merrick's report in our last post - now we are catching up a little belatedly with another two from Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner and Ann Abraham the Parliamentary Ombudsman. These three are for my money at least the consumer superstars of the day.

For this post I want to concentrate on R&A - not yet royal and ancient perhaps but certainly senior and important players in our public life and able to do a very good turn on the couch of any talk show discussing the consumer cause. Do they have any shared heritage in common that would bear on their present pre-eminence?

Public Praise

The Guardian gave a clue in a its editorial about Richard Thomas and his role:

Leader
Thursday July 12, 2007
The Guardian

"Promoting both privacy and openness might sound like a paradox, but not to the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas. His instincts are with the individual, whether they are battling to get their hands on papers that the government would rather keep secret or trying to safeguard their privacy by ensuring that personal secrets are treated with respect. Happily, he has wide powers to help them on both fronts. Both policeman and judge on matters of who knows what, Mr Thomas also regards his position as a platform from which to speak out. He did so yesterday, lambasting big companies, such as Orange, that he says are slipshod about customer confidentiality. His earlier targets have included ministers seeking to dilute Freedom of Information and MPs trying to exempt themselves from it. That takes courage for a public official, but Mr Thomas is not short of that. He started his career at a Citizens Advice Bureau in west London supporting tenants against slum landlords - who showed their gratitude by getting thugs to smash his office windows.".

Early Days in the Harrow Road

It is the career start in the Citizens Advice Bureau that I wanted to highlight. Indeed that is how I first met the man. He was presenting to the management committee of the Greater London CAB on how he and colleagues were doing at the Harrow Road(?) West London Law Centre. I cannot remember tales of broken windows nor can I claim to have recognised at once the future potential of that radical young man. But I do recall his presentation as being rather more interesting than most of what went on at that committee's meetings and so no surprise when he turned up shortly thereafter at the National Consumer Council as their Legal Officer. He went on to do a long stint as Director of Consumer Affairs at the OFT and from there via a spell in the private sector at Clifford Chance to the post of Information Commissioner.

Leading the Citizens Advice Bureau

Ann's CAB experience was at a rather more elevated level than Richard's - she was Chief Executive of NACAB (the national association of CABx) from 1991-97. From there she went on to become the Legal Services Ombudsman which was a fairly brave move by the Lord Chancellor's Department of those days. After all, Ann was no lawyer which was then, as now, the usual qualification for Ombudsmen (Walter and Richard are both lawyers). But she certainly had a very good go at the Law Society's complaint handling system, demonstrating that fearless and energetic style that distinguished her time as Legal Services Ombudsman.

She shows a similar fearlessness and confidence in the powers of her office to those lauded by the Guardian in Richard Thomas's case.

What would the CAB have to do with that? Why should that organisation be the nursery for these consumer leaders as opposed to any where else?

The Value of the Individual Voice

The answer lies in a speech that Ann made in June this year to people working in one of her favourite/least favourite new area of concern - the NHS -  where she spoke about the value of the individual voice,

"So, the voice of the individual patient, as expressed in complaints, is hugely valuable - not only for the complainant but also for all of us. That's where the Ombudsman has a distinctive role - in levelling the playing field in those most unequal of disputes between the citizen and the mighty NHS - and thereby enabling those individual voices to be heard.

The complaints investigated by the Ombudsman are only a small proportion of the many thousands of complaints with which the NHS in England deals each year, but they are among the most serious and potentially the most instructive."

On the same theme, the Guardian leader identified Richard's instincts as being with the individual.

I believe that it is the early and continuing exposure to individual cases via the CABx that make both Ann and Richard such powerfully independent advocates for the citizen. There is no organization in the UK that sees more of the user/consumer/citizen experience than the CABx.

Treasure Trove

Our frustration in the early days of the Office of Fair Trading was how difficult it was to unlock the treasure trove of consumer experience that lay within the files of the individual Bureaux. All paper then in the 70's of course and it was a major undertaking for bureau managers and staff as hard-pressed then as now to fillet files for facts that could form the basis of a case for reform and action. Also then the CAB was an organisation what seemed to me to be permanent crisis with exhausting internal struggles for the soul of the organization between the colonels and their good ladies who ran the country bureaux as volunteers and the young urban radicals often full-time and paid - all this together with the never-ending struggles for funding both national and local. It was touch and go for a while whether this model of advice giving would survive.

Surviving, Changing and Prospering

Things have changed now of course - take a look at www.citizensadvice.org.uk/index/aboutus/were_changing.htm#y1 for a view of how much they have already changed and will change in future.

My point is that consumer champions need to have an experience of the face to face and the way that the single case can be the foundation of improvement and action. Walter Merricks may not have started in the CAB but his authority and standing and that of his organisation are also founded on the weight of experience and evidence gained from handling cases and using the information from them.

What makes these paid servants of the state risk their necks is their connection with consumer cases. And risk their necks they do. I would not have taken bets on Richard being re-appointed. (Rumour has it  - and what is a blog for if not for repeating rumours - that his period of appointment expired too soon after Alistair Graham had been sacked and the government did not want to risk another row about failing to re-appoint persons with a track record of independence). Anyway he is still there and so is Ann.

Not ready to take responsibility for solution

The shame is that in both the public and private sector there are no individual voices at the level of the hospital or the Trust or the individual bank or insurance company who speak out on the evidence they have seen and the dissatisfactions and problems that users have brought to them. It is too easy to dismiss them as gutless - they do not after all have the protected public platform that an Ombudsman enjoys as a much bigger beast in the complaints and Whitehall jungle. But until people lower down take the decisions necessary to resolve complaints and assume a responsibility for solutions rather than administering a process, it will remain easier and safer to send the complaint up the costly ladder to a higher authority.

Essential Reading

As I conclude this post, I realise that I have fallen into the trap of celebrity journalism and said nothing about the Annual Reports of our featured superstars. All froth and no substance. You will just have to read them yourselves here: Information Commisioner and Parliamentary Ombudsman. 

Is our diagnosis correct that the solid evidence of the complaints cases offers a secure base to criticise aspects of both markets and public sector organisations? How can the freedom to speak out and to represent the user experience be encouraged amongst the managers of complaints to maximise the chances of improvement and minimise escalation?