Sir William Kennedy Reid KCB (born 15 February 1931) is a retired civil servant who was Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration and Health Service Commissioner for England, Scotland and Wales (Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman) between 1990 and 1996.
Reid was born in Aberdeen in 1931 and was educated at Robert Gordon's College and George Watson's College. He studied at Edinburgh University and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he achieved first-class honours in Classics.
Between 1952 and 1954, Reid did national service in the British Army before joining the Ministry of Education in 1956. He moved to the Cabinet Office in 1964 and served as Secretary to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend. During this time, Reid played a modest role in helping to develop the Office of Parliamentary Ombudsman.
In 1967, he became secretary of the Council for Scientific Policy in the Department of Education and Science, becoming Under Secretary in 1974 and then Accountant-General in 1976. Reid moved to the Scottish Office in 1978 as Deputy Secretary of Central Services and then Secretary of the Scottish Home and Health Department between 1984 and 1990.
He was Chairman of Governors of the Scottish Police College between 1984 and 1990. Reid received an Honorary Doctorate from [Aberdeen University in 1996, from Reading University in 1998 and from Napier University in 1998.
Ombudsman
Parliamentary investigations
In 1990, Reid was the first civil servant to be appointed to the post of Ombudsman since Sir Idwal Pugh. He came to the Office when it was flushed with the success of the Barlow Clowes investigation, which crowned an otherwise quiet decade in which fewer MPs were referring cases. Reid oversaw a dramatic upswing in caseload during his tenure - from 704 complaints in 1990 to 1,920 in 1996, the largest annual total in the history of the Office. Yet the Office did not keep up with this growth, and the number of outstanding cases grew considerably. The remit of the Ombudsman extended appreciably, to incorporate administrative actions of persons appointed by the Lord Chancellor as a member of court administrative staff. The Office also had numerous tribunals brought within its jurisdiction, as well as bodies such as the National Lottery, the Coal Authority, The Environment Agency and the Rail Regulator.
Reid chose to expand on the meaning of the term maladministration, a term given no definition in the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 in his annual report of 1993. He observed that to define maladministration is to limit it and extended the 'Crossman catalogue' (as set out in 1966) to include
rudeness; an unwillingness to treat an individual as a person with rights; a refusal to answer reasonable questions; neglecting to inform an individual on request of his or her rights or entitlement; knowingly giving advice which is misleading or inadequate; ignoring valid advice or overruling considerations which would produce an uncomfortable result for the person overruling; offering no redress or manifestly disproportionate redress; showing bias whether because of colour, sex, or any other grounds; an omission to notify those who thereby lost a right of appeal; a refusal to inform adequately of the right of appeal; faulty procedures; the failure to monitor compliance with adequate procedures; cavalier disregard of guidance which was intended to be followed in the interest of the equitable treatment of those who use a service; partiality; and failure to mitigate the effects of rigid adherence to the letter of the law where that produces manifestly inequitable treatment.
Reid's addendum made apparent his belief that maladministration should be interpreted very broadly and that it should not be interpreted in a way that disadvantaged the complainant.
Some notable cases were investigation during Reid's time as Ombudsman. A widely publicised statement by the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health, Edwina Currie, that "most of the egg production" of the country was "sadly... infected with Salmonella" sparked a collapse in the price of eggs and confidence crisis in the industry in December 1988. The Government introduced a compensation scheme and a farmer complained that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) had changed the basis of awarding compensation after giving him what he regarded as an unsatisfactory amount. Reid found that MAFF had not made its decisions on the basis of evidence, had been evasive when questioned about the basis on which compensation was determined and had unreasonably concluded that the complainant's case was closed. In consequence, MAFF apologised and agreed to pay compensation to the complainant.