Sir Edmund Gerald Compton
GCB KBE (30 July 1906 – 11 March 1994) was a
civil servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
and the first
Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) comprises the offices of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (PCA) and the Health Service Commissioner for England (HSC). The Ombudsman is responsible for considering complaints ...
.
Early life and family
Compton was born to Edmund Compton, involved in South American trade, and a mother from a
clerical
Clerical may refer to:
* Pertaining to the clergy
* Pertaining to a clerical worker
* Clerical script, a style of Chinese calligraphy
* Clerical People's Party
See also
* Cleric (disambiguation)
Cleric is a member of the clergy.
Cleric may a ...
background. He was schooled at
Rugby
Rugby may refer to:
Sport
* Rugby football in many forms:
** Rugby league: 13 players per side
*** Masters Rugby League
*** Mod league
*** Rugby league nines
*** Rugby league sevens
*** Touch (sport)
*** Wheelchair rugby league
** Rugby union: 1 ...
where he had won a scholarship and developed a love of music.
At
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
Compton became acquainted with the renowned historian and educationalist
H. A. L. Fisher
Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher H.A.L. Fisher: ''A History of Europe, Volume II: From the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century to 1935'', Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1984, p. i. (21 March 1865 – 18 April 1940) was an English historian, educator, a ...
, who was the Warden of
New College. Compton was among the undergraduates (of whom
Richard Crossman
Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (15 December 1907 – 5 April 1974) was a British Labour Party politician. A university classics lecturer by profession, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1945 and became a significant figure among the ...
was one) invited by Fisher to socialise with the likes of
Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece ...
,
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
,
General Smuts
Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, (24 May 1870 11 September 1950) was a South African statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various military and cabinet posts, he served as prime minister of the Union of South Af ...
and
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during t ...
. It was during this time that Compton determined to enter public service.
In 1934, he married Betty Tresyllian Williams (d. 1987), of a Quaker carpet-making family from Kidderminster. They had one son and four daughters, of whom the youngest is
Isobel Sidney, Viscountess De L'Isle.
Civil service
Compton entered the civil service in 1929 and was transferred to the
Colonial Service
The Colonial Service, also known as His/Her Majesty's Colonial Service and replaced in 1954 by Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS), was the British government service that administered most of Britain's overseas possessions, under the aut ...
, during which he visited
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
. In 1931 he was transferred to the
Treasury
A treasury is either
*A government department related to finance and taxation, a finance ministry.
*A place or location where treasure, such as currency or precious items are kept. These can be state or royal property, church treasure or in p ...
where he developed a reputation as a very capable civil servant. At the beginning of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Compton was seconded to the
Ministry of Aircraft Production
Ministry may refer to:
Government
* Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister
* Ministry (government department), a department of a government
Religion
* Christian ...
where he served as the
Private Secretary
A private secretary (PS) is a civil servant in a governmental department or ministry, responsible to a secretary of state or minister; or a public servant in a royal household, responsible to a member of the royal family.
The role exists in t ...
to the Minister,
Lord Beaverbrook
William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964), generally known as Lord Beaverbrook, was a Canadian-British newspaper publisher and backstage politician who was an influential figure in British media and politics o ...
. Returning to the Treasury in 1942, Compton became known as an effective wartime operator. In peacetime, Compton continued his ascent through the Treasury, being appointed in turn Third Secretary in 1949 and
Comptroller and Auditor General
An auditor general, also known in some countries as a comptroller general or comptroller and auditor general, is a senior civil servant charged with improving government accountability by auditing and reporting on the government's operations.
Fr ...
in 1958. In these roles he demonstrated characteristics of dependability and versatility. He was described by the Chairman of the
Public Accounts Committee,
John Boyd-Carpenter
John Archibald Boyd-Carpenter, Baron Boyd-Carpenter, PC, DL (2 June 1908 – 11 July 1998) was a British Conservative politician.
Early life
He was the only son of Conservative politician Sir Archibald Boyd-Carpenter MP and his wife Annie Dug ...
as being "''enormously knowledgeable on public finance''".
Ombudsman
At the
1964 general election,
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
pledged to establish an office to handle complaints against government departments.
In 1967, the Prime Minister
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...
appointed Compton to be first Parliamentary Commissioner (or '
Ombudsman
An ombudsman (, also ,), ombud, ombuds, ombudswoman, ombudsperson or public advocate is an official who is usually appointed by the government or by parliament (usually with a significant degree of independence) to investigate complaints and at ...
'). Wilson trusted Compton to navigate the Office through its formative years. He previously worked with Compton when he had been Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and described him as "''one of the shrewdest, cleverest, and nicest, men in Whitehall''". Compton, he said, taught him ''"a very great deal about how government operates in Britain''".
The challenge Compton faced was to establish the Office in the face of considerable public scepticism about its efficacy. The media described the Office as ''pointless'' and ''ludicrously emasculated'' and Compton as a ''swordless crusader''. Compton busied himself recruiting staff during 1966 and 1967 and formulated the structure and operating procedures of the Office. He drew upon his previous experience, using the Exchequer and Audit Department of the Treasury as a model. Staff were borrowed from other departments and legal advice procured from the
Treasury Solicitor's Department
The Government Legal Department (previously called the Treasury Solicitor's Department) is the largest in-house legal organisation in the United Kingdom's Government Legal Service.
The department is headed by the Treasury Solicitor. This office go ...
. Compton sought civil servants with ''enquiring minds'' and the ''ability to size up cases and people rather than the ability to organise or to plan''. Compton also pioneered an investigation procedure that was to remain unchanged for thirty years and was unique among Ombudsman schemes. The procedure involved a ten part jurisdiction test of complaints, a two-stage investigation process and a final reporting stage.
Compton took a low-key approach to his work, making limited efforts to publicise the Office. As a result, the number of cases handled by the Office was low from the outset and diminished further. The practice of publishing anonymised reports on an annual basis often long after the events described attracted criticism that this garnered too little publicity for the Office.
Sachsenhausen
Compton investigated the first major case to be referred to the Office. Former
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
of
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...
complained that they had been denied compensation by the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
in its administration of a scheme to compensate victims of
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
persecution. Their complaint was referred to the Office by
Airey Neave
Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, (;) (23 January 1916 – 30 March 1979) was a British soldier, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) from 1953 until his assassination in 1979.
During World War II he was the first British prisoner-of-war
...
MP, who had himself escaped from
Colditz
Colditz () is a small town in the district of Leipzig, in Saxony, Germany. It is best known for Colditz Castle, the site of the Oflag IV-C POW camp for officers in World War II.
Geography
Colditz is situated in the Leipzig Bay, southeast of the c ...
during the war. The Foreign Office had concluded that the complainants were not entitled to compensation having been imprisoned outside the camp proper. It considered the treatment of the complainants to have been comparable to a breach of the
Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...
rather than the systematic brutality of a 'normal' concentration camp.
[''The Ombudsman, Citizen and Parliament'', Gregory and Giddings (London, 2002), p.161] Compton concluded that there were defects in the administrative procedure by which the Foreign Office had decided to reject the claims. He found that the reputation of the complainants had suffered as a result and that this constituted injustice. Compton thought that the result of his investigation would serve to vindicate their claims and affirm their sincerity. In the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
debate that followed the report in February 1968 the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
The secretary of state for foreign, Commonwealth and development affairs, known as the foreign secretary, is a minister of the Crown of the Government of the United Kingdom and head of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Seen as ...
George Brown George Brown may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* George Loring Brown (1814–1889), American landscape painter
* George Douglas Brown (1869–1902), Scottish novelist
* George Williams Brown (1894–1963), Canadian historian and editor
* G ...
defended the position of the Foreign Office while announcing his intention to pay compensation to the complainants. Brown asserted that there had been no ''bungling'' or ''blundering'' by the Foreign Office and that the issue was merely one of judgment. Members expressed little support for the begrudging way in which Brown had agreed to pay compensation. The Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration endorsed the findings of the report and rejected the contentions of the Foreign Office.
Having adversely reported against the Foreign Office and secured a remedy for the complainants, Compton had enhanced the reputation of the Office and demonstrated that it would be able to address wrongs done by less weightier departments. Compton had also proven incorrect critics of the Office who had doubted its ability to confront departmental injustice.
Boundaries and the BBC
Following his tenure as Ombudsman, Compton served as the Chairman of the
Boundary Commission
A boundary commission is a legal entity that determines borders of nations, states, constituencies.
Notable boundary commissions have included:
* Afghan Boundary Commission, an Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission, of 1885 and 1893, delineated the no ...
between 1971 and 1978. He was then Chairman of the Programmes Complaints Commission at the
British Broadcasting Corporation #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
between 1972 and 1981 where he was distinctly even-handed between the public and imaginative programme producers.
Compton died in 1994 and was described by
Tam Dalyell
Sir Thomas Dalyell, 11th Baronet, , ( ; 9 August 1932 – 26 January 2017), known as Tam Dalyell, was a Scottish Labour Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons from 1962 to 2005. He represented West Lothian from 1962 to 1983 ...
MP as ''a very considerable public servant of the British state.''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Compton, Edmund
Ombudsmen in the United Kingdom
1906 births
1994 deaths
Civil servants in the Exchequer and Audit Department
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Alumni of New College, Oxford