Tribunals, Ombudsman, Inquests and Inquiries Flashcards
Routes to accountability
- Tribunals
- Ombuds schemes
- Inquests
- Public inquiries
- Internal complaints mechanisms
- Administrative reviews and reconsiderations
Why does legal accountability matter?
- Improving the quality of decision making
- Ensuring compliance with the law
- Preventing officials acting in own interests or carrying out own biases
- Protecting people in state custody including hospitals / residential care
- Protecting people in public in general
- Preventing unlawful actions by all levels of government
Tribunals
- Independent, statutory, specialist judicial body.
- Hears appeals against specific decisions.
- Can only act when there is a right of appeal / application.
- Decides cases on the substantive merits and CAN substitute its own decision
- deal with specific types of decisions
His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service
The Upper Tribunal
First Tier Tribunal
Employment Appeal Tribunal
- there are different chambers under each except for emplyment as they have a different way of going about it
What if there is no right of appeal?
- Welfare benefits: mandatory reconsideration stage before tribunal appeal.
- talks about universal credit
Tribunal trade-offs
Elliot and Thomas explain that tribunals are:
- Slower and more expensive than internal administrative review…
- More robust and independent than an internal review.
- But judges would be more specialised in that area of law than a high court judge
- but quicker and cheaper than full judicial review;
- Judges are not as well qualified as those in the High Court;
Ombudsmen
- ‘Complaint man’
- Role is to:
1. Investigate complaints of maladministration;
2. Secure redress for injustice caused by maladministration;
3. Identify underlying reasons for maladministration and lessons which should be learned. - public sector: individual complaining against the state
What is maladministration?
- Delay incorrect action or failure to take any action
- failure to follow procedures or the law
- failure to provide information
inadequate record-keeping - failure to investigate
- failure to reply
- misleading or inaccurate statements
- inadequate liaison
- inadequate consultation
- broken promises
Intended advantages of Ombudsman
- Cheaper, less formal and less legalistic than court proceedings.
- Free.
- Inquisitorial.
- Able to investigate lawful but poor service, rudeness, delays, maladministration.
- Will resolve disputes of fact
Ombudsman schemes
- Require you to go to your MP first
- UK main is parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
1. Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman - investigates complaints about government departments, some other public bodies and complaints about NHS hospitals or community health services
2. Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman - investigates complaints about local councils, care homes and some other organisations providing local public services
3. Housing Ombudsman - resolves tenant or leaseholder disputes with social landlord or voluntary member of ombudsman scheme
4. Prisons and Probation Ombudsman - independent investigations into deaths and complaints in custody
Two main functions
- Redress Function: investigating, putting it right and obtaining an apology if appropriate, re individual grievances and complaints.
- Quality Control function: broader role in looking at systemic issues.
- eg. the ‘Debt of Honour’ case; Windrush Compensation Scheme
limitations (caveats) of what the ombudsman can do
- Remedy of last resort - have to go through the body’s own complaints system first.
- Only deals with complaints about the body’s exercise of its public functions.
- No single overarching body that runs the ombudsman schemes.
Can you JR the Ombudsman’s decisions?
Yes for certain decisions
- if they decide not to investigate at all, or not to investigate all issues;
- Lawfulness of the ombudsman’s decision-making process, on normal JR grounds.
- AND of government failure to implement Ombudsmen’s recommendations
Inquests
coroner’s investigation into
a) a person’s death is to ascertain:
who the deceased was;
b) how, when and where the deceased came by his or her death; and
c) certain formal particulars which need to be registered concerning the death.
Article 2: Right to life
- a negative obligation to refrain from taking life AND
- a positive obligation to take appropriate measures to safeguard life
