Treasury Committee quizzes FOS over 'poor decision making'

The programme's investigation claimed that "staff with inadequate training or understanding of financial products are judging cases, with some having reached decisions in favour of the banks, without properly reading case files".

In the programme, Rushanara Ali MP, Member of the Treasury Committee, said: “The ombudsman needs to demonstrate that they have satisfactorily dealt with cases in the past. If they can’t do that then... members of the public will want to go back and have their cases reviewed where appropriate.”

Nicky Morgan has now written to Caroline Wayman, Chief Ombudsman and Chief Executive of FOS, for further comment about the findings of the programme.

In particular, she has asked Wayman to "assure Parliament that the problems identified in the Dispatches programme have not led to poor decision making at the FOS".

Morgan questioned what processes are in place to undertake quality control on previous decisions and whether FOS has the ability to reopen cases that it feels it may not have decided correctly.

The Treasury Committee has also asked whether Wayman believes there could be a potential bias to decide in favour of a bank, and to address allegations that under qualified staff are making decisions on cases for which they have inadequate training experience.

FOS has also been asked to estimate the scale — in terms of the number of people — of those affected by alleged errors or improper handling of cases.