Dear David, People who know me, realise I am not great with silence. If there’s a pause in a conversation, I just have to overflow into it with whatever is produced by the moths colliding in my head.
Sometimes I find other people’s silences puzzling. Just last week, yours baffled me, so I am afraid the moths are being unleashed.
Being health minister is a big job and it may be hard to keep track of details, so here’s a recap of what the moths are on about.
In a March confidential briefing about the publication of a report on interval cancers in the bowel screening pilot programme, Ministry of Health officials told you I’d complained to the ombudsman over their refusal to release the report to me. Their advice referred to my February 5 request for it, denied because it was "soon" to be publicly available — at the end of March.
In their advice to you they didn’t mention I had received a similar excuse when I had asked for the report last December. Your officials said the ombudsman had conducted a preliminary investigation "and concluded the ministry’s decision was appropriate".
The only trouble was, this wasn’t true.
The Office of the Ombudsman, which has not commented, but has outlined its process, tells me chief ombudsman Peter Boshier indicated in his provisional opinion he was upholding my complaint.
After receiving that advice, the ministry decided to release the information. Judge Boshier later confirmed that the ministry should not have refused my original request and had taken too long to release the report, but made no further recommendations because by then (late March), the report had been released.
According to the brief four-paragraph letter I received from the ministry last week, which took more than two weeks to produce, the information about my complaint in the briefing to you "reflected a misunderstanding of advice" received and did not "reflect the information that was provided to this office by the Office of the Ombudsman".
I do not understand how your officials came to "misunderstand" Judge Boshier’s preliminary view. In my considerable experience with the ombudsman’s office (often involving your ministry), its advice is not usually hard to understand, even if you might not agree with it.
Weeks ago, when I first approached your office for comment, I was told it was unlikely, as it was not your role to manage the Official Information Act process for the ministry and, as the report had been released, the matter had been resolved. Questions related to the quality of advice to you were ignored.
When I received the ministry response last week, which told me you had been informed of the correct position, I unsuccessfully sought comment from you again.
Is this a good look? Is there a risk we might think you are blase about what your officials tell you? How can we tell whether this "misunderstanding" is an aberration or an indication of something more serious?
In this instance, the misleading advice involved an ombudsman investigation, albeit not an earth-shattering one. In our system of government, the ombudsman is an officer of Parliament. Isn’t it kind of important to be accurate about ombudsmen utterances?
You might not want to do a Boris and throw your officials under one of his imaginary buses, but what about a "I was disappointed at this, but having sought an explanation, I am confident it will not happen again, and that it is not indicative of the standard of information I usually receive"?
Maybe stern words have been spoken behind closed doors, but your office gives no sense to me that you even get this.
The ministry tells me it appreciates me letting it know about its error and assures me "we are taking proactive steps to improve the way we provide our advice" to the minister. Proactive steps? Are they baby steps or adult strides? Does this mean a)if we are being fudgy and trying to make ourselves look good, we will do it more convincingly and make sure nobody finds out, or b)we will give free and frank advice which is also factual?
I cannot take the ministry’s appreciation seriously. It knows I found out about this by chance when it showed up as part of a former colleague’s OIA response. She passed it on, after spotting my name.
The briefing paper told you, under the "no surprises" policy, that it was "most likely" I would "prepare and submit articles drawing inferences "from the interval cancer report and cited previous articles I have written. Good grief. As it happens, I have yet to write about that inadequate report. But your silence on the other questions has given the moths plenty of inference fodder. Surprise!
