Sir Michael Sydney Buckley (born 20 June 1939) is an English retired civil servant who was Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration and Health Service Commissioner for England, Scotland and Wales (Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman) between 1997 and 2002.
Buckley was born in 1939 and educated at Eltham College and Christ Church, Oxford where he studied Mods and Greats. In 1962, Buckley joined the Treasury as an Assistant Principal. He was the Assistant Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan between 1965 and 1966.
He was then a Principal at the Treasury until 1968, when he moved to the Civil Service Department, where he stayed until 1971. Buckley moved back to the Treasury as Principal and then as Assistant Secretary between 1974 and 1977. He was at the Department of Industry between 1977 and 1980 and then moved back to the Treasury yet again as an Assistant Secretary.
In 1982 Buckley became the Under Secretary of the Cabinet Office before becoming the head of the electricity and coal divisions at the Department of Energy in 1985. In 1989 Buckley became the principal establishment and finance officer at the department, where he served until 1991. Buckley was Chairman of Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust between 1995 and 1996.
Ombudsman
Buckley was appointed as Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to succeed Sir William Reid and took up the post in January 1997.
As a priority, Buckley sought to eliminate the backlog of casework which had accumulated without affecting the quality of investigations undertaken by the Office. He targeted additional staff and changes in working methods and management as means of speeding up investigation throughput times. Staff would only undertake work that would add value to the resolution of a complaint. It was no longer to be assumed that all aspects of every complaint were to be exhaustively examined.
Delegation within the Office also went much deeper so that decisions were made at the lowest appropriate level. Other additions to Office practice included targets, performance appraisals for staff, reviews of performance against targets and time recording. Screening and investigation staff were now to be employed on permanent contracts instead of the Office relying on those on short-term contracts and secondments.
As a consequence of these initiatives, the average throughput time for cases fell from 91 weeks in 1998–99 to just 44 weeks in 1999–2000. Investigations backlogs were also eliminated. These improvements were being achieved against a backdrop of consistently heavy workload: the Office was annually receiving approximately 1,500 new cases.
Greater use was also made of informal investigations to secure redress for complainants. Greater publicity was also given to the existence of the Office, including a website that included an interactive complaints form. The Office was also moved to new premises at Millbank Tower.
In 2002, Buckley criticised the Government for withholding information from his investigation into the Hinduja affair, in which Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson was accused of attempting to influence a passport application by Srichand Hinduja. Buckley complained that the refusal to release the information strikes at the very heart of my office's function and effectively made my investigation unsustainable.
The Cabinet Office apologised and disclosed to Buckley the papers he sought. Buckley criticised the Home Office for its failure to maintain its files on the sensitive issue in anything approaching an adequate manner. Buckley had sought a transcript of a disputed telephone call between Mandelson and the Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien about the affair. However, the Home Office were unable to find many of the papers for the case. Tony Wright, Chairman of the Public Affairs Select Committee, said the affair demonstrated appalling record keeping, horrific administrative failures and breakdowns in IT systems in Government departments.
The most notable Parliamentary case handled by the Office during Buckley's term as Ombudsman concerned complaints about the actions of the Department of Social Security in connection with SERPS. SERPS as an additional pension under which widows and widowers would receive the full additional pension earned by their spouse. The Social Security Act 1986 changed inheritance rules so that widows and widowers would only receive half of the amount of the additional pension.