Marre determined to bring the work of the Office more fully into the public eye and made efforts to respond positively to requests from the press, radio and television for interviews and participation in programmes.

Two instances where such powers were used were in the reports issued into complaints concerning overlapping television licences and the collapse of the Court Line group of companies.

Marre investigated whether the statements by Benn had misled holidaymakers about the safety of their bookings with Court Line when there were rumours that the company was imperilled.

This was a reversal of the decision by Sir Edmund Compton in the earlier Duccio case that a ministerial statement was not an instance of administration open to investigation.

The Government rejected Marre's findings and, in the subsequent debate, the House of Commons split on party lines.

This followed pressure from within Parliament from those who had sought to include health matters within the remit of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 and from those members of the public who were dissatisfied with the existing complaints handling procedure.

Marre recruited a mixture of civil servants and medical staff for the new posts created for the Health Ombudsman.

By the end of his tenure as Ombudsman, Marre had firmly established the Office as a fundamental feature of complaints about the National Health Service.

Although Marre had not been a practising Jew, he gave some of his time to Jewish social and cultural causes, becoming President of the Maccabaeans in 1982.