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Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on November 22, 2007
Parliamentary Affairs 2008 61(1):206-215; doi:10.1093/pa/gsm054
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© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Ombudsman as Part of the UK Constitution: A Contested Role?

Ann Abraham

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

UNLIKE many treatises on the constitution of the United Kingdom (UK), the Government Green Paper on constitutional reform, The Governance of Britain, published in July 2007 does actually acknowledge the existence of my Office. The rather limited context in which it does so is, however, telling: the Parliamentary Ombudsman, we are told at paragraphs 76-7, should be subject to pre-appointment hearing with the relevant select committee before the Government's nomination of the candidate is accepted. Nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes; and true, the very mention of the Ombudsman in this context derives from the recognition that the role is one in which Parliament has a particularly strong interest because the officeholder exercises statutory powers in relation to protecting the public's rights and interests. What is absent, however, is any consideration of what those powers are and of how they do indeed relate to the interests . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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   Conclusion: ‘re-invigorating democracy’?
 

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