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6.44 pm
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset): I begin by echoing the welcome given to the Economic Secretary in her new post by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I also welcome the debate. In many ways, it shows the House at its best. We have heard measured comments from hon. Members of all parties. We are debating a Select Committee report that firmly shows the House of Commons trying to fulfil its age-old task of holding Governments to account and insisting, in the terms used by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), that the public, experts and democracy as a whole have the power to understand what is being done to them and on their behalf. Statistics, therefore, are not a byway. They are one of the centrepieces of democratic society. Without faith in accurate statistics, we stand in imminent danger of beginning at any time on the slippery slope to totalitarian rule. I do not mean that we are anywhere near it today or have been at any time in our history, but it behoves us, and it is right that we take the responsibility seriously, to concentrate without the slightest complacency on whether our statistics are accurate and our systems for making sure robust. Otherwise, the threat to our democratic liberty will be very great.
I welcome the Select Committee report. As several hon. Members have mentioned, there is no doubt that recommendation (b) goes to the heart of the matter. It has been quoted already. I merely remind the House that it states clearly that it should be the head of national statistics or any statistical commission who decides what is included in the national statistics and hence what is subject to the rigours of the new commission.
The White Paper has been much discussed in the debate so far. It is headed "Building Trust in Statistics". It was introduced with great acclaim by the Government.
The Economic Secretary told the world in her press release:
The White Paper does not mark a new era for official statistics. It is perhaps at best the beginning of an idea of what, later, if put in legislative form and much enhanced in various ways, might be a somewhat better way of arranging official statistics. I admit that that does not quite carry the same soundbite characteristics as
We have to attend to just how much of a problem there is here. The Chairman of the Select Committee, who carries some weight in the matter, said that there was some ambiguity about who would decide what went in and what stayed out. I rather agree with the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. I do not think that there is any ambiguity. The Select Committee talked in terms of decision, but section 2.10 of the White Paper on page 5 makes it clear that the new commission will
Collection is a difficult matter. Economic judgments, as many hon. Members have said, often depend on judgments about how accurate statistics really are. However, any Minister may also wish to conceal a series that is politically embarrassing.
I wish I could say that, from my own experience of working in a bureaucracy, I had any confidence that our civil service would always provide a bastion sufficient against that temptation. However, I fear that the structure of our government makes it systematically unlikely that the civil service will do so. On the whole, civil servants are entirely decent people trying to do a good job, but the job that they are asked to do is to serve the Government of the day--not Parliament and not the electorate. It becomes extraordinarily difficult for them to resist a Minister who finds it inconvenient to have a particular piece of information released.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House who have any experience of government--most of them have vastly more such experience than I have--will know what I am talking about when I say that one cannot rely on the home Departments to vet their own statistics. That was the conclusion reached by the Sub-Committee and that was very clear and right. It is extremely to be deplored that the White Paper says nothing as to how we can avoid that problem in the future. That is what the Royal Statistical Society is on about.
It is also relevant to remind ourselves of which sort of statistics are involved. Some of them have already been mentioned this evening: waiting lists and crime statistics--and police numbers, which are so topical. However, the most interesting question of all relates to those statistics that never appear. I feel morally confident--I am absolutely sure that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Radice), the Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, who, in a previous incarnation, played a distinguished role as the Opposition spokesman on education, would echo what I say--that buried somewhere in the Department for Education and Employment are fairly large numbers of surveys and a fair number of statistics as to how effective or ineffective the new deal is turning out, and that they have not been revealed. I say that because it was always the practice of the DfEE and its predecessors not to reveal surveys and statistics that they did not find convenient. I am sure that Ministers have sought to inform themselves as to those matters and have revealed--perfectly honestly--those things that they think are convenient, and have concealed those things that they think are inconvenient. That is not the way to convey to an electorate or to Parliament a proper picture. It is not special to this Government; it has been true of Governments for ages past. Now there is an opportunity to change it by consensus. The Select Committee has given us that opportunity; the White Paper should be rewritten to give it to us properly.
We turn to the home Department that is the most important; that is what I want to add to the debate. That Department is of course the Treasury--Her Majesty's Treasury--the august body that is the subject of the Select Committee's whole endeavour and which produced this splendid, or not so splendid, White Paper, and which is responsible for enormously important statistics.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham has already referred to the inflation figures. I restate the point that I made in an intervention to him; if there is a single set of exogenous statistics that matter most, it is the inflation statistics. Those statistics are not merely a piece of information; they are an operator. As the Chancellor has chosen to set the targets of the Monetary Policy Committee in a series of statistics, the choice of the series itself and the governing of the way in which that series is
compiled are matters that quite directly affect policy as well as information. Clearly, that is intolerable. It is not possible for a Chancellor of the Exchequer honestly to claim that he has subcontracted the control of monetary policy to another body under a clear and transparent target, if the target is in fact not clear and transparent, but opaque, and run by his own officials in ways that he does not declare.
"This White Paper marks a new era for official statistics."
I am bound to say that I am not a great believer in Government hype, whatever Government are in power. I am afraid to say that this Government have been rather better at Government hype than most in our history, but hype is least appropriate when it is least true. I accept the infinite delicacy of the comments of Government Members in attacking the White Paper. Labour Members have been careful to avoid outright attack, and I understand entirely that I should do the same in their position. But the mood of the House this evening has shown clearly that the Royal Statistical Society, to which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) referred, was right.
"a new era for official statistics",
but it is alas the truth. It is the truth not least because, as various hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd), have said, the crucial recommendation (b)--that the decision about what goes into national statistics should be independently made--is precisely the one that is by implication turned down in the White Paper.
"advise on the scope of National Statistics".
As if that left any ambiguity--I suppose that it might be argued that the phrase by itself was ambiguous--the White Paper says in section 4.5 on page 13:
"The Government will ask the Statistics Commission to keep under review the scope of national statistics and make periodic recommendations"--
again, in advisory mode--and
" . . . Ministers will decide".
I think that it is pretty clear that we are dealing not with an independent body that will decide what things it vets but with a wonderful combination of Ministers. The Minister is undoubtedly a human being and hence probably prey to the temptations to which we are all subject. That certainly applies to all of us on the Opposition Front Bench. How convenient not to admit into the fold of national statistics any series of statistics that may be dubious because of the character of the collection.
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