Examinationn of Witnesses (Questions 65-79)
KEITH DUGMORE
AND MS
JILL LEYLAND
24 MAY 2006
Q65 Chairman: Mr Dugmore and Ms Leyland,
welcome to the Committee. Could you identify yourselves formally,
please.
Mr Dugmore: Yes. My name is Keith
Dugmore. I chair the Statistics User Forum and I have a particular
interest in local data and the comparison of areas throughout
the UK.
Ms Leyland: I am Jill Leyland.
I represent the Society of Business Economists, so obviously I
have an interest in economics statistics, on the Statistics User
Forum.
Q66 Chairman: Just tell us in a couple
of sentence what the Statistics User Forum is. How is it involved
in this process? Are you consulted on this document?
Mr Dugmore: Yes. Jill did the
consultation with our members. We now have 17 user groups who
are involved and it has been creeping up in recent times. They
span quite a range of topics, people who are interested in transport,
health, the labour market, and so on. Others come from a particular
area of activity, such as market research and local authorities,
so it is quite a mixed and diverse group, but I think it is characterised
by the fact that it covers a whole range of interests in statistics
and those of us who are in it are all enthusiasts and active users
of statistics, in many cases using them for decision-making out
in the wider world in local authorities or business.
Q67 Chairman: Okay. We do not want
to reprise the evidence we have already taken, which I think you
may have listened to, but are there any other issues, major issues,
to users which you have not heard explored or ventilated this
afternoon?
Mr Dugmore: I think one which
springs to mind—and Jill has got a chance to think about
this—is access, as we would put it, in that in order to
make statistics useable to the wider world, particularly occasional
users, the information has to be in a form which can be easily
grasped and understood. You should not have to be a technical
expert to use it. So, for example, I have been particularly interested
in the discussion about UK-wide statistics. There is naturally
concern, if we take the Census as an example, about which topics
were asked and whether there is compatibility within the UK, but
then from a user's viewpoint there is the issue that if I do want
statistics for the whole of the UK can I just get them in one
place, or do I have to go to different websites to find them?
If I do do that, are they actually labelled the same sorts of
topics and are they in the same formats? So if you think of wanting
to download some data onto your PC these practical issues of access
are absolutely vital and are the difference between information
being used and not being used.
Q68 Chairman: That includes access
to administrative data across local government, presumably?
Mr Dugmore: Yes. Shall I say statistics
derived from administrative sources are terribly important to
a lot of users and so we might be looking at information derived
from the Department of Work and Pensions, or Health, or another
topic which I think is coming up is local debt with county court
judgments, and in all these sorts of cases one is wanting to be
able to grab nice, simple, easily accessible data sets and understand
what they are.
Q69 Chairman: Jill Leyland, could
you tell us what the role of users should be, in your view, in
the more independent system which the Government wants to set
up? How should users be incorporated in it?
Ms Leyland: Obviously there is
no one single way in which users could be incorporated in it,
but we do feel there is a need for some formal inclusion in the
Government's process of the statistics system, in particular,
of course, the proposed non-ministerial department.
Q70 Chairman: You suggested just
a consultative kind of process or a forum, or whatever. Is that
sufficient?
Ms Leyland: No, and I think one
suggestion, which may not be the only one, would be a sort of
formal committee of the board, for example. We do not think it
is probably enough just to have one person on the board who represents
users because one person can get overruled, but a committee which
can make recommendations, which can actually go public if necessary,
would be appropriate. I think it is probably worth saying that
there is a lot of interaction between the government statisticians
and users at an individual level. All our user groups would interact
and that works very well, but that is at a sort of working level.
I think it is in the sort of governance, direction and scope.
If I can take one example from the economics side, the UK for
a number of reasons was quite slow in the 1980s and 1990s in following
the shift of the economy towards services and away from manufacturing
and in sort of generating the statistics needed to enable that
activity to be captured adequately.
Q71 Chairman: Are there examples
from other reformed statistics, operations in other countries,
of how a users' forum would work, or a users' committee?
Mr Dugmore: Yes, I think there
is experience to be gained from other countries and certainly
Canada and Australia have been mentioned, though I am particularly
interested in the Nordic countries and Finland, but I must admit
I am not an expert on what is done overseas.
Ms Leyland: The EU is also building
in information.
Q72 Chairman: Does Eurostat have
a similar body, a users' forum?
Ms Leyland: I understand that.
Ian MacLean, who I think is sitting here, is someone who is extremely
knowledgeable about international matters and legislation and
how things work in other countries. He and Ulric Spencer did a
report for the Statistics Commission on this subject and we defer
to them.
Q73 Mr Newmark: The Statistics User
Forum has argued that the Government's proposal provides insufficient
scrutiny of that independent board. Which solution do you favour,
allowing the board an oversight only function or retaining an
organisation such as the Statistics Commission?
Mr Dugmore: I think we feel that
if the board is to have an active role there needs to be essentially
some form of audit or longstop saying, "Is it doing well
or not?" We have mentioned the National Audit Office as one
such mechanism, but I think the Statistics Commission would be
another alternative well worth looking at, but I think our important
point is that if users are to have an active part within the board,
and so on, ultimately there does need to be somebody who is exercising
oversight.
Ms Leyland: Could I add to that,
because I think there is a couple of other points. It is important
that not only is there actual scrutiny but that there is seen
to be scrutiny, which I think is possibly the disadvantage of
leaving this to the board, because that would not necessarily
be perceived separately. The other point, which is I guess a question
for you, is that if Parliament is to have the oversight of the
system (and that is something we will welcome), clearly your time
is limited and there may need to be some body which can investigate
for you.
Q74 Mr Newmark: Money is also limited,
so how would a strengthened order body be funded?
Ms Leyland: The Statistics Commission,
as I understand it, if I have looked the figures up correctly,
has a budget of about £1.3 million. That does not seem to
me to be an excessive budget and that could be devoted to the
new body. The last thing we would want to do is to have any form
of audit, regulator, or anything that is too expensive because
we would rather spend the money on the statistics, but a small
amount like that. One other point is that it is important to have
scrutiny which is perceived to be tough and perceived to be independent
to support the National Statisticians. They do sometimes get an
unfair press and when you have got a situation like Network Rail,
whether that was a good or a bad decision, I think that sort of
decision—perhaps I am speaking of my personal view here,
but I think I am not the only person to think it—would be
referred automatically to audit so that it could be, as it were,
endorsed (or not, as the case may be)
Mr Dugmore: I think it helps with
the perception of trust.
Ms Leyland: Yes, it does. It is
the perception of trust.
Q75 Mr Newmark: What role, if any,
should ministers actually play in the appointments process?
Ms Leyland: I think we would want
the appointments process to be as independent, and again perceived
to be as independent as possible.
Q76 Mr Newmark: Should that be similar
to the NHS Independent Appointments Commission?
Ms Leyland: I am not familiar
with that.
Q77 Mr Newmark: Okay, but independence
is important?
Ms Leyland: Not just ministerial.
I mean, it could be cross-party, or something wider than that.
Mr Dugmore: Yes, I think it should
be seen to be as independent as possible. It is all about the
perception of trust in the wider world.
Q78 Mr Newmark: On that sort of independent
appointments commission would you expect there to be user presentation
on the board?
Mr Dugmore: I think so. Essentially,
I suppose, we tend to see the users as customers. I think it is
very easy for a lot of this to be viewed through the eyes of suppliers
and mechanisms, and so on, but ultimately it is the people out
there who are using it who are, we would think, the important
ones.
Q79 Mr Newmark: So it would add to
the trust factor if there was some sort of user representation?
Mr Dugmore: Yes.
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