House of Commons |
Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Statistics and Registration Service |
Statistics and Registration Service Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Emily
Commander, Committee
Clerk
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 16 January 2007
(Morning)
[Sir John Butterfill in the Chair]Statistics and Registration Service Bill10.30
am
That
(1)
the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 a.m. on
Tuesday 16th January) meet
(a) at
4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 16th
January;
(b) at 9.00 a.m. and
1.00 p.m. on Thursday 18th
January;
(c) at 10.30 a.m. and
4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 23rd
January;
(d) at 9.00 a.m. and
1.00 p.m. on Thursday 25th
January;
(2)
the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 23;
Schedule 1; Clauses 24 to 43; Schedule 2; Clauses 44 to 57; Schedule 3;
Clauses 58 to 70; Schedule 4; Clauses 71 to 73; new Clauses; new
Schedules; remaining proceedings on the
Bill;
(3)
the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought
to a conclusion at 4.00 p.m. on Thursday 25th
January.
I welcome you
to the Chair, Sir John. I have had the privilege of serving under you
on the Finance Bill Standing Committee, as have a number of members of
the Committee. For those who have not, I recommend it as the usual
channels are always looking for new recruits. Sir John, you take a
close interest in general in Treasury matters, but specifically in the
Chair you are always fair, and firm only when required. We look forward
to your wise guidance in our deliberations on this Bill.
I also welcome all members of
the Committee, particularly those on the Opposition Front Benches who
have already taken a close interest in the subject, not just on Second
Reading but in tabling a number of parliamentary questions to me and to
the National Statistician. I am sure that they will contribute
significantly to the scrutiny and debate on the Bills
provisions.
It is an
important Bill. Following the independence of the Bank of England, the
independent competition authorities, the Debt Management Office and the
Financial Services Authority, this Bill forms the next move in the
Chancellors reforms to set up a system of modern economic
governance.
On this
day, which marks the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between
England and Scotland, I am particularly pleased that this new statutory
system, with the independent statistics board at its heart, will
include Scotland as well as Wales and Northern Ireland. That is
something that all in the statistics world, the Treasury Select
Committee and others in the House had urged us to try and secure, but I
think few believed we would manage to secure it. I pay tribute to those
in Wales and Northern Ireland who have made the decision to participate
fully and, in particular, to Tom McCabe and other Scottish Ministers
who have
decided that they too want to see these measures and this system to help
improve the credibility, integrity, quality and consistency of
statistics across the United Kingdom. That is what the Bill is designed
to do.
I am glad that
we reached agreement on the days needed when we discussed them in the
Programming Sub-Committee. I know that those on the Opposition Front
Benches and some Back Benchers on both sides will ensure that the Bill
gets its fullest possible scrutiny. I am particularly pleased to have
two members of the Treasury Select Committee also serving on this
Standing Committee; they will bring their expertise to it. Committee
members will notice that we are not proposing knives in the programme
motion to dictate the progress, but I am determined to do justice to
the full Bill, including part 2. Therefore, I and the Lord Commissioner
of Her Majesty's Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West
will ensure that the Committee will sit late should that be necessary,
although I hope that it will not.
Finally, I point out to the
Committee that, contrary to customary practice, the programme motion
proposes that we deal with new clauses and new schedules at the point
in the Bill to which they relaterather than after going through
all the clauses. I hope the Committee will agree to that element being
most sensible, and to the programme motion in
total.
Mrs.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con): Itoo am
delighted to serve under your chairmanship,Sir John. I propose
to confine my remarks to the minimum here, since there will be ample
opportunity when considering the lead amendment in the first group to
look at some general themes in the Bill.
There is cross-party agreement
that this Bill is important. If we do this right and amend the Bill
appropriately, we could contribute significantly to the strength of,
and confidence in, statistics. We will approach the scrutiny process
conscious of that importance and in a constructive spirit. As my hon.
Friend the Member for Sevenoaks recently pointed out, the motto of the
Italian statistical office is Statisticum republicae
fundamentumthat is, Statistics are the
foundation of the state. The Opposition will be working with
diligence and determination to strengthen the Bill to ensure the
integrity and trustworthiness of those
foundations.
Dr.
Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD): It is a great privilege,
Sir John, to serve under your chairmanship. I think that we all start
from broadly the same position on the philosophy of the Bill. We want
the quality of statistics to be maintained and improved and the
independence of statistical production strengthened. There are a great
many areas in which the Opposition parties see scope for improvement
and strengthening, so we, the Conservatives, the nationalists and the
chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks, have
tabled a substantial number of amendments. We need proper time to
consider them.
There
is no controversy about the programming. I think there was an amicable
understanding that the Government are proceeding in a perfectly correct
way; no knives are being imposed. I am sure that we will be able to
conduct our business speedily but amicably.
Stewart
Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP): I add my voice to those who
have already spoken. The Bill is very important and has real potential
to improve confidence in and remove the perception of political
interference in the production of statistics.
I am relaxed that nine sittings
will be more than sufficient. There are no knives in the motion and
that is welcome. I was taken by the Financial Secretarys
comments about the 300th anniversary of the Union; this is the
Statistics and Registration Service Billone would never have
imagined that there was a Scottish election just around the corner. It
is a pleasure to serve under you again, Sir John, and, mercifully, on a
rather shorter Bill than the Finance
Bill.
Mr.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con): I, too, join in
welcoming you to the chairmanship of the Committee. I convey the
apologies of two of our colleagues, who are currently serving on the
Select Committee on Treasury down the corridor. I hope that my hon.
Friends the Members for Braintree and for South-West Hertfordshire will
be joining us shortly. That will give us three members of the Select
Committee serving on the
Committee.
I hope that
the programme motion will be sufficient. Such things are always
difficult when drafted by the Programming Sub-Committee before any
amendments are tabled and before the sub-committee is aware, as it
cannot be, exactly how many amendments there are likely to be. If we
have to run a little longer sometimes, I hope that we will do so,
because I think that the Bill is generally recognised to be very
important. A Bill to reform statistics does not come round that often
and it is important that we get it
right.
I am
encouraged, however, by the approach of Ministers throughout the
process. They have been reasonably open-minded. I was a little puzzled
by the letter that the Financial Secretary sent to my hon. Friend the
Member for Chipping Barnet, in which he
said:
I am
looking forward to Committee, which I am surewill prove
invaluable in furthering understanding of the Governments
position.
That is one
function of the Committee, but not the sole function. One might argue
that one of the purposes of the Committee is to further understanding
of the Committees position so far as the proposals are
concerned. We look forward to considering them in greater
detail.
Question
put and agreed
to.
That, subject to
the discretion of the Chairman, any written evidence received by the
Committee shall be reported to the House for
publication.
Written
evidence to a public Bill Committee is subject to parliamentary
privilege, but, subject to the discretion of the Chairman, any written
evidence received shall subsequently be reported to the House for
publication. I believe that we may be the first Committee to resolve to
publish in this way, now that the House authorities are ready to allow
for that in the manner proposed.
I and, I am sure, the Committee
welcome this modest step in further reforming the Houses
procedures, which reinforces the opening up of scrutiny
of legislation to a wider public. That may make it difficult in the
short term for Ministers, but, in the end, stronger and better scrutiny
leads to better
legislation.
Mrs.
Villiers:
I welcome the move to incorporate formal
consideration of evidence into the Committees proceedings. We
on the Opposition Front Bench have been in touch with a number of
interest groups and experts on the matter, to whose notes and
representations we will refer alongside the formally tabled
evidence.
Rob
Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab):
Sir
John, what a pleasure it is to appear before you again. Were this
motion to be passed and given that it would give you discretion, can I
tempt you to give an indication as to whether you would have a
predilection towards
transparency?
The
Chairman: I am in favour of transparency wherever it can be
achieved, but I shall take expert advice on these
matters.
Question put
and agreed to.
Clause 1Establishment
(4) The purpose
of the Board shall be to uphold the quality and supervise the
dissemination of statistics for the public
good..
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenientto
discuss the following amendments: No. 17, in
clause 7, page 4, line 21, at
end insert
(1A) In order
to fulfil its objective under subsection (1) above, the Board shall
have authority to
(a)
supervise the production of any official statistics;
and
(b) require any
improvements and corrections that it considers necessary to official
statistics..
No.
191, in
clause 7, page 4, line 21, at
end insert
(d) the
effective use of official statistics to inform local and regional
public service
delivery..
No.
192, in
clause 7, page 4, line 26, at
end insert
and
effective use in the public
interest.
No.
194, in
clause 9, page 5, line 1, at
end insert
(c) have regard
to their usefulness at a local level and the importance of
coterminosity of
data..
Mr.
Fallon:
I, too, welcome the motion that we have just
passed. I feel a sense of history settling on the shoulders of the
Committee.
Amendments
Nos. 152 and 17 stand in my name. I hope that the right hon. Member for
Cardiff, South
and Penarth will speak to his amendments, which are very much in tune
with mine, and the gist of which I certainly support.
Amendment No. 152 states the
purpose of the Bill, which is not set out anywhere in the Bill. That
might be a surprise. Clause 1 simply establishes the statistics board,
and we do not discover until we reach clause 7 or 8 what its objects
are and what its functions are to be. That is a mistake. This is a big
Bill, and an important one, and it is rather dull drafting that it does
not set out what the purpose of the new statistics board is to be. I
rather regret, given the historical importance of the Bill and the
infrequency with which we update statistical legislation, that it does
not have a preamble. Other statistical laws around the world have
preambles, and we could easily have incorporated one here. However, I
am advised that, as a preamble has not been tabled by the Minister as
part of the drafting, it is now too late to incorporate one.
We can and should set out up
front the purpose of the new statistics board, and I hope that the
Minister will concede that it is important to do so. This is not simply
a Whitehall rearrangement. He has made it clearas was stated
explicitly in the Queens Speechthat this is a
worthwhile attempt to enhance confidence in statistics by strengthening
the independence with which they are collated and published. In other
words, the new statistics board is avowedly a public goodthat
is the intention of the Billand I believe that we should affirm
that loud and clear.
I have drafted a declaration in
three parts: first, to ensure that the board upholds the quality of
statistics; secondly that it should have the overarching duty of
supervising their dissemination; and thirdly that it should perform
both those tasks for the public good. There is a reference to quality
in clause 7, but there the definition is more restrictiveit is
to promote and safeguard the quality of official statistics. My wording
is much more general, namely that the board should have an overarching
duty to enhance the quality of all statisticsI have not said
official or national or anything else.
I have used tighter drafting, using the word uphold
rather than promote, and I have widened it so as to
refer to official, national or other statistics.
The point about supervising
dissemination is self-evident: statistics belong to all of us. The
board should be under an overriding duty to be involved in their
dissemination and to supervise them because, as my hon. Friend the
Member for Chipping Barnet said, statistics are a key part of
democracy. If we believe in more active citizens and in empowering
people to participate more fully in democracy, they should have a right
to statistical information, which was once the sole preserve of
Ministers and
Governments.
10.45
am
I would like
the new board to adopt a motto rather like that of the Italian
statistical office, but we cannot put that into the Bill. The point of
that motto in Italy is its recognition that information is one of the
cores of the state and that statistics are a key part of democracy. If
we believe that we should say so loud and clear.
Amendment No. 17 strengthens
clause 7. One of the fundamental criticisms of the Bill, outside and
inside Parliament, is that nowhere does it give the new board the duty
or the power to supervise the statistical system as a whole. That is a
weakness; the board should enforce high standards throughout the
system. It is not enough for it simply to be given the power to
monitor, to get reports or to publish commentary. We want the new board
to be more than a commentator; we want it to have real teeth in all
Departments to supervise the high standards that we require and if
necessary to intervene to secure them.
Alun
Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op): I am
grateful to have the opportunity to speak to the amendments in my name.
I echo the commentsof others in welcoming your benign but firm
chairmanship of the Committee, Sir John.
I am passionate about taking an
evidence-based approach to the development of public policy down to the
most local level. The amendments are consistent and support the
Chancellor and the Government in creating an independent statistics
system. However, it is important to make explicit the need for
information to be available locally. On the day when we celebrate the
Act of Union, it is important to remember that very few policy areas
make sense if they are considered on only an England-wide basis. One
has to drill down to regional and local level to understand what is
really happening.
As
a Welshman, I underline the fact that it does not make sense to
consider policy for Wales on average either; statistics for Wales only
are not terribly helpful in developing policy and service delivery, nor
are they very helpful in ensuring that good intentions, at Government,
Assembly or local level, match the reality. That has been recognised by
many organisations throughout the country, by the Office for National
Statistics, the national statistician and Ministers and officials in
many Government Departments.
During my time as a Minister, I
have been involved in discussions that have acknowledged the importance
of making that detailed analysis in order to ensure that public policy
is appropriately delivered at the most local level. The problem is that
it is easily overlooked. It is very easy for statistics to be produced
in a way that informs the general understanding of what is going on,
but does not allow targeted action in order to make a difference. I
would illustrate that from my own experience in a number of different
ways.
Some 25 or 30
years ago I worked in the Ely areaof Cardiff, which is
represented by the Lord Commissioner of Her Majestys Treasury,
my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan). It is an
area with considerable social problems. Those of us who worked there
thought that we understood the area. It was only when we undertook a
major project of research, kindly paid for by the Welsh Office, and
analysed what was happening right down to the most local area
statistics, that we realised that there were big variations within the
area. We had to produce an overlay of acetates, rather than the
computer-assisted graphics that are now available through geographical
information systems, and we realised that the way that we delivered
services, worked with young people and produced diversion to try to get
young
people out of criminal activity needed to be much more finely tuned and
targeted within the area if the resources available were going to help
to deliver the right
results.
There are
many other systems around the country now, such as those used by the
police to identify the needs in their area and to identify criminal
activity. One needs to overlay that with the structure of an area and
detailed information to understand what is happening and to tackle the
causes through policies such as the crime reduction partnerships, as
well as identifying what is happening in terms of the economy, criminal
activity, social problems and so on. That is why it is important to
write in the sort of amendments that I have proposed
here.
Clause 7 deals
with the objectives of the new board. Amendment No. 191 would add a
fourth element to that important list of objectives that have to be
promoted and
safeguarded:
the quality
of official statistics, good practice in relationto official
statistics, and the comprehensiveness of official
statistics.
The board
would also have to promote and
safeguard
the effective
use of official statistics to inform local and regional public service
delivery.
Similarly
Amendment No.192, which is also in line with the Governments
objectives and what the hon. Member for Sevenoaks sought, would
insert:
and effective
use in the public
interest.
There is no
point having statistics unless one enables and promotes their public
use. I am certain that this was in the mind of the Chancellor and the
Government in introducing the
Bill.
Going forward as
a Member of ParliamentI am sure that many colleagues will have
shared this experienceone looks to understand the problems in
ones own area. Very often it is not possible to get the
information in the form that one wants it. Where that information is
available, such as in the House of Commons Library and Government
Departments, the staff do an excellent job in providing the analysis.
But sometimes the information has not been gathered in a way that
allows it to be aggregated to the level of the local authority, the
local ward area or to overlap with school catchment areas or with
specifics where the comparison is important for those of us who are
trying to improve the quality of life for the people in our area. I
have already referred to the importance of using statistics
intelligently to understand what is happening in an area in relation to
matters such as crime
reduction.
I had a
meeting with the police in my area lastFriday specifically to
discuss that issue. Despite the improvement in the way that statistics
can be handled and manipulated through the development of
computer-assisted systems, we are still not using them effectively.
Frankly, I know less about the statistics and the link between crime
and other figures in my constituency than I did when I first became a
Member of Parliament. That is because the opportunity offered by the
techniques is not being developed adequately and because there is
insufficient focus on the all-important local information, which can be
aggregated up to inform wider public policy.
The issue came very much into
focus when I became Minister for Rural Affairs in the later part of the
foot and mouth disease outbreak. As we looked at policy on the issue, I
discovered that we did not have information at a sufficiently local
level to tell us what was needed in the very local economies of
villages or rural areas. A lot of that information exists now, and some
excellent work has been done by the Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs and Professor John Shepherd, who undertook detailed
academic work for the Department. That means that there is a much
better fit and that organisations such as local authorities and
regional development agencies have a much better understanding of what
is needed area by area. Some of that statistical information enables
us, for instance, to look at the location of post offices in a rural
area and to ask whether they are in the areas of greatest need, where
closures might cause reasonable hardship, or in better-off areas, where
people would, by and large, have the facility to drive to a nearby post
office. Those are very much the practical stuff of delivering policy,
and the illustration that I gave will be of interest to voluntary and
community organisations, as well as to central and local
government.
The point
that I am making also applies to amendment No. 194 to clause 9, which
states that the board
should
have regard to
their usefulness at a local level and the importance of coterminosity
of data.
If the basic
raw data is not collected coterminously at the most local level, we
cannot aggregate up. At that local level, the raw data might have to
remain confidential, because individuals might otherwise be identified,
but there are ways of handling that through professional scrutiny and
data protection methodology. The point, however, is that if the data
are collected and coterminous at the most local level, it will be
possible to aggregate up to where they will make sense and enable
policy decisions to be taken at the most local levels, whether at ward
level or within a ward. It would be a missed opportunity if we did not
make it explicit that that is the intention and that the board, in
looking at quality at a Scottish, Welsh, national and even regional
level, needs to ensure that there is an understanding of variations
right down to the most local level.
That seems to be a most basic
point, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the
Treasury will indicate sympathy and support for it. It certainly fits
with the Governments wish to ensure that delivery is focused
and effective at the most local level. I very much hope, therefore,
that I will have a sympathetic response to my amendments, which, as I
said, look fairly innocuous, but which could make a big difference to
the effective use and the good design of statistics if the requirement
that they propose is built in from the commencement of the new
structures activities.
Mrs.
Villiers:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the hon. Member
for Sevenoaks for tabling amendment No. 152, because, as he said, it
goes to the heart of the whole discussion that the Committee will have
over the next two weeks. It allows us to address the question of how we
set up structures to ensure that statistics are high quality and
produced according to a sound and reliable methodology. It also gives
us the chance to
consider how we ensure that statistics are produced and disseminated in
a way that serves the public good, not the political ends of the
Government of the day. It is important that we do not conflate those
two distinct issues. Both, including working to improve the quality,
accuracy and reliability of official statistics, are important, but as
former national statistician Lord Moser said, it is often not the
figures that people distrust, but the people and institutions that use
them. The most pressing issue relates not to quality and
accuracyimportant though they arebut to how statistics
are used, released and interpreted. The key problem that we need to
address is ministerial spin.
We must
ensure that statistics are produced and released according to
principles of integrity and impartiality, and seen to be so. As Bill
McLennan, former head of the Government Statistical Service and the
Australian Bureau of Statistics, has stated:
It is essential of
course for integrity to exist, but it is also important for it to be
perceived to
exist.
Tackling the
perception of political interference is as important as tackling the
interference itself. Along the same lines, the Audit Commission
recently
stated:
A new
statistical system needs to ensure robust methodologies to produce
statistics, and also ensure that the perception of political
interference in the publication of statistics is
minimised.
That trust
will never be restored unless we can secure real independence for
statistical
services.
11
am
Rob
Marris:
The hon. Lady appears to be speaking to an
amendment on the use of statistics, not the amendment before us, which
is to do with the quality and dissemination of statistics. She is
talking about the use of statisticsa completely separate
issue.
Mrs.
Villiers:
The term dissemination covers
the use of statistics broadly, and embraces the points that I have
made. We need to discuss the crucial issue of the dissemination of
statistics and the interpretation put on them.
Another former National
Statistician, Len Cook, emphasised the important role that statistics
can play in democracy and in influencing political change. Professor
Sir Denis Pereira Gray, of the university of Exeter, has stated that
lack of trust in statistics
is a tragedy and seriously
undermines democracy and all governments of all
parties.
The Opposition
agree that statistics are part of the essential fabric of democratic
debate, as has been adverted to this morning. That is a key reason why
reform is so
important.
Professor
Pereira Gray went on to talk of the economic benefits of reform in
terms of the international reputation of the UK and inward investment.
Distrust in official figures is not only damaging to democratic debate
but can cause grave practical and economic problems. The Statistics
Commission has pointed out:
Decisions affecting our
lives are driven by official statistics including allocation of public
money, operational decisions, policy intervention, policy evaluation,
assessment of public service performance.
Wisely, it goes on to warn:
Unless the
decision-makers trust the statistical evidence, they will ignore
itpotentially at a high economic
cost.
We would do well
to heed that
warning.
If decisions
are taken on the basis of incorrect statistics and if a Government make
the mistake of believing their own propaganda, they are likely to take
the wrong decisions, with damaging consequences for the quality of
public services and the stability of the economy. That is one of a
number of reasons why for some years the Opposition have been calling
forthe independence of statistics and why we have made the
independence for statistical services a key part of our triple lock to
entrench stability into the economy. That is also why we have tabled
amendments to strengthen the Bill and achieve the overall goal set out
by amendment No.
152.
I turn to
amendment No. 17. The Opposition believe that it is vital to ensure
that the reforms encompass not only the ONS but the decentralised
statistical activities in the different Departments. If they do not, we
will not have secured genuinely independent statistics, nor addressed
the problems that I have outlined. One of the weak spots of the Bill is
that the reforms are insufficiently rigorous on departmental
statistics. The new board is given the obligation to oversee statistics
that fall outside the scope of national statistics, but insufficient
power and authority to live up to that
responsibility.
Amendment
No. 17 would go some way to remedying that problem by giving the board
explicit authority to supervise production of all official statistics
and require improvements. However, we need to go further than that and
seek to apply the code of practice across the range of official
statistics. Only then will we have a reform of the strength and scope
necessary to restore trust in Government figures. I look forward to
discussing that matter in detail when we get to clause
10.
Amendment No. 192,
tabled by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth,
provides us with a useful opportunity to look in more detail at the use
of statistics. If we are to have a world-class statistical system, we
need to have regard to the use to which those figures are put.
Therefore, it is important that the new structures set up by the Bill
are responsive to the needs of users, both from inside and outside
Government. Clearly, there will be necessary constraints on meeting the
needs of users dictated by the availability of resources allocated to
statistical services. However, within those inevitable constraints, it
should be the goal of the new reform system to produce statistics that
are relevant to important policy areas and statistics that people want
to use.
There is no
doubt that whatever problems there are with trust in official
statistics, those statistics are still used by many thousands of
people, businesses, charities and other organisations both within and
outside Government. The Treasury Select Committee heard evidence that
the ONS website received, on average, 700,000 visitors per month
between April 2005 and January 2006.
The National Statistician, in
planning and co-ordinating statistical services, should have user needs
at the forefront of her priorities. It is important
that those needs are identified and evaluated in running the system. It
is also essential that both the National Statistician and the board
engage in frequent and productive consultation with the user community
to ensure that this comes about. I welcome the amendment proposed by
the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth. I also welcome
the fact that accessibility is explicitly recognised as important in
clause 7(3).
The
statistics users forum has highlighted the important contribution that
users can make in ensuring that statistics are relevant, effectively
distributed andof good quality. It acknowledged that the
interaction between Governments, statisticians and usergroups
have proved to be productive but feels that further work needs to be
done and that there is insufficient non-governmental user input into
high-level planning.
I
agree with much of the sentiment behind amendments No.191 and 194.
Statistical services should take into account the requirements and
concerns of local government. As we have heard from the right hon.
Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, the London Government
Association, in a helpful note circulated to the Committee, state that
it would like to see further
standardisation,
collection
and presentation of statistical information
It is important to facilitate comparison
of information at a local level so that we can create meaningful local
profiles of service needs and meaningful performance standards and
indicators.
Such work
will inevitably be subject to the constraints of the resources budgeted
for ONS and the Governments statistical services. Nevertheless,
within these constraints, it is important to ensure that local
government concerns are recognised, particularly given its role in the
collection of data and provision of public services, the measurement of
which is a significant function for the statistical
services.
I hope that
the Government will take notice of the concerns expressed by the Local
Government Association and those outlined by the right hon. Member for
Cardiff, South and Penarth. The amendments also refer to the regional
use of statistics, and perhaps this is where I have a different view to
that of the right hon. Gentleman. As I strongly oppose English regional
government and regionalisation, I am sceptical about this aspect of the
amendments. However, the moves in the Bill, which I am sure we will
have the opportunity to discuss at a later
stage
Alun
Michael:
Does the hon. Lady recognise that whether or not
there should be any elected regional government in English regions, a
great deal of activity takes place at a regional level? Economic
development, transport considerations and a whole host of activities
take place at a regional level. Therefore, governance, whether by
officials or combinations of local authorities, needs to be well
informed.
Mrs.
Villiers:
I acknowledge that a lot of policy making goes
on at a regional level, and that should be supported by reliable
statistics. However, I would challenge the extent to which policy
making should be
going on at a regional level, and would like to see more of those policy
issues determined at a local rather than regional level. That is in
many cases the better level at which to take such decisions.
With that, I will draw my
remarks to a close. As I have said, I look forward to discussing
similar issues later in relation to reconciling differences in
statistical collection in the different nations of the United Kingdom,
when important issues arise that I hope will be tackled by the Bill and
the Committee.
Dr.
Cable:
I just wanted to say a few words in support of
amendment No. 152, and the consequential amendment No. 17. The right
hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth also made some compelling
arguments in favour of his own amendments, which persuaded me. I want
primarily to address amendment No. 152. I do not think that there is
anything contentious in it. The issue is about having a simple, clear,
pithy statement from the outset about what the board is for,
emphasising quality dissemination. In the modern jargon, that would be
called the mission statement for the board. It is true that further on
in the Bill, there is a more complex description of the boards
purposes. Clause 7, in particular, sets that all out in some detail,
but it is rather cumbersome and not easy to get ones head
round. I would have thought that in order to save the future board the
small consultancy fee that it would probably have to pay to get its
mission statement clarified, it would probably be useful for us to do
that.
The reasons for
emphasising quality and dissemination were eloquently set out yesterday
in the press coverage about Home Office statistics. In a remarkable
report by the permanent secretary to the Home Office, he acknowledged,
rather contritely, in front of a parliamentary Committee, that one in
five of his Departments statistics were seriously defective. He
acknowledged that 30 data sets received a zero rating for reliability.
What was remarkable about that was, first, the positive point that our
system is sufficiently transparent and accountable that the Home
Secretary can acknowledge such defects, but what was also clear is that
a major Department of State is producing statisticsit was not
clear whether they were official or nationalthat are of such
poor quality. They have been reproduced for a long period and used in
political debate without any correction. There is also an absence of
any mechanism in government for ensuring that that is stopped and
corrected. We hope that after the Bill is passed such activity will not
continue, and that there will be a much greater emphasis on quality in
Government statistics, and better accountability for them all
round.
It is
absolutely right for the hon. Member for Sevenoaks to suggest that we
set out clearly from the outset what the board is for. There are
primary and secondary purposes, but the quality of Government
statistics as a whole, whether official or not, must emphasise the
dissemination and the wider public interest, not the internal purposes
of the Government. That is essentially what it is all about, and no
harm and potential good is done by setting that out clearly in the
first clause of the Bill, in a clear and simple statement of one
sentence.
Rob
Marris:
I invite members of the Committee, particularly
colleagues on the Labour Benches, to disregard totally the remarks made
by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet on amendment No. 152. Although
she trained as a lawyer, and talks law, she seems to have great
difficulty in distinguishing between two simple nouns,
dissemination and
use.
Fiona
Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab): I want to speak to amendment
No. 17. Although I suspect that its requirement for improvements and
corrections is implied in the existing clause, it is important to dig
into the issue of accuracy, and the ability to change where statistics
are inaccurate. Much of the debate on the Bill has focusedas
did the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet in her remarks todayon
how people use statistics. There is an implication that it is only the
Government who spin statistics. We all know that that is not the
case.
Other members
of the Committee will have heard, as I did, an argument about
immigration statistics on the Today programme this
morning between my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead
(Mr. Field) and somebody from some pressure group. We are
used to people using statistics in ways that are convenient to them. We
require from the Bill an ability to ensure that the statistics that the
Government publish are accurate, and that they are corrected when they
are not. Some ability to be confident that their statistics are above
that kind of argument is one thing that I believe everybody in the
Committee seeks to
achieve.
11.15
am
Let me
illustrate with an example that I used in my speech on Second Reading.
The census figures for the town that I represent are wrong. By quoting
from a campaign postcard, I shall show how my local council is spinning
the figures. The councils postcard
states:
For
example, in 2004 the government said only 15,000 people a year would
migrate to the UK from Eastern
Europe.
That
is based on a letter from a Minister that referred to the only research
that had been done at that point. There is a question about whether
such research ought to be commissioned by the Government. It was
undertaken as part of an academic study, and it predicted incorrectly
that the figure would be 15,000. The Government did not say,
Our statistical predictions are, but they referred to
the
research.
Rob
Marris:
Was it not in fact the case that 15,000 referred
to individuals from Poland, not from eastern
Europe?
Fiona
Mactaggart:
My hon. Friend is right. Nevertheless, the
number was wrong. It was arrived at for the purposes of an academic
study, and it was referred to by Government Ministers, but it was never
claimed as a Government statistic. The postcard
continues:
In
2006 it
that is,
the
Government
admitted
as many as 600,000 could have come since
2004.
Of course,
could have come includes people who visited the UK, and
I think that that figure is probably accurate. Yet, the
postcard goes on,
in
August 2006 official statistics found that the number was only 74,000
in one year.
Of course, that relates to how long people
have stayed.
That is
an example of spinning. It is a perfectly responsible piece of spinning
because it is done in the context of my local councils feeling
reasonably aggrieved by the fact that the ONS calculation is
inaccurate. In fact, it does not refer to the case that the major
source of inaccuracy is not international migration, but internal
migration, because ONS counting in relation to internal migration is
based largely on registrations with GPs, and in Slough, 17 of our
GPsnearly all of themhave closed lists and have had
closed lists for a long time because they are full. We have a walk-in
centre that takes up the slack and treats 200,000 patients a year. In
addition, we have a large number of young single men in our population
and, as we all know, young single men are more unlikely than other
parts of the population to register with a GP. All those factors mean
that there is an error in the
calculation.
Anyone
with an iota of sense would recognise that statistics that say that
everywhere in the south-east except for Slough, one of the most booming
economies in the south-east, has a growing population do not
computethey do not make sense. It does not require a
sophisticated statistician to work that out, yet Slough council,
despite all its efforts and the lobbying that I have done with it, has
failed to persuade the ONS or anyone else to correct the errors in the
statistics. The campaign postcard goes
on
The
Chairman:
Order. We are all very interested in hearing
some examples of past errors in statistics, and we know that that is
what the Bill is designed to address, so I have allowed the discussion
to range widely, but we are getting away from the amendment. I would be
grateful if the hon. Lady would be satisfied with the number of
examples that she has already
given.
Fiona
Mactaggart:
You interrupted me just as I was bringing it
all to the point, Sir John, using the same examples but focusing on the
amendments. The final paragraph of the campaign postcard
states:
Despite
this huge discrepancy the government still refuses to change
Sloughs funding saying it is using the best available
data to count our
population.
They are
indeed the best available data. That is the point. The data available
from the ONS mid-year estimates are flawed, but there is no independent
mechanism to drive change when figures are inaccurate. Amendment No.
17, tabled by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks, would specifically give
the board the responsibility for correcting inaccuracies.I
urge my hon. Friend the Minister to eitherreassure us that the
Bill will do that or accept the amendment.
The census is not a minor
statistical series: it counts the population of Britain and is the
spine of many of our other official statistics. If we do not have a
mechanism to correct gross errors swiftly, that will undermine public
confidence in our statistics. The current arrangements, which are slow,
bureaucratic and unresponsive, and which insert the Government between
the public and the statisticians, are inadequate.
The amendment is one way forward, although whatever
happens under the Bill will not be fast enough
for the people of Slough. I will not go down that road as you have urged
me not to, Sir John. Nevertheless, we need a mechanism to correct
errors properly, and I hope that the amendment might provide
it.
The
Chairman:
At this point, let me say that hon. Members are
free to remove their jackets should they wish to do
so.
John
Healey:
I was intrigued by the hon. Member for Chipping
Barnet citing the Italian statistical services motto,
Statistics are the foundation of the state. I am glad
that she translated it for me. It is absolutely true, but statistics
are not the property solely of the state. As the hon. Member for
Sevenoaks said, statistics belong to us all. I therefore hope that all
members of the Committee will welcome the initiative launched by the
ONS last week of a website that gives individuals access to their own
inflation calculator. That is the sort of popularising and greater
public access to statistics that increasingly characterises their use
and the interest in
them.
The hon. Member
for Twickenham might have been persuaded by the amendments, but I am
less so. I was, however, persuaded by the succinct point made by my
hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West about
dissemination. The hon. Gentleman was right to draw our attention to
the importance of the quality of official statistics. The Bill is not
just about confidence in Government statistics, or Government spin, as
the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet called it. As my hon. Friend the
Member for Slough eloquently explained, we have concerns about the
quality and accuracy of statistics and the need for corrections to be
made properly when the required standards are not met. I draw her
attention to clause 7(1)(a), which specifies the boards first
objective and provides the mechanism that she wants. I shall explain in
a moment why amendment No. 17, tabled by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks,
which would give the board power to direct Ministers and Departments,
is not the right way to meet his concern. I expect to hear further
telling examples from Slough to help illuminate the later stages of the
discussions.
I
welcome the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for
Cardiff, South and Penarth. He speaks from a position of experience of
use work and constituency work in Cardiff, as well as ministerial
experience at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
the Department of Trade and Industry and the Home Office. I will give
him a sympathetic response, but I hope that he understands my
reluctance to accept his amendments.
I will now deal with the
amendments and the arguments that were put before the Committee by the
hon. Member for Sevenoaks. I pay tribute, as I did on the Floor of the
House last week, to his chairmanship of the Treasury Sub-Committee. He
self-effacingly waves me away, but the Select Committee on the Treasury
has taken a consistent interest in the quality of statistics. It
produced an important inquiry and report in the run-up to Christmas,
which has helped to inform the Governments approach to the Bill
and I know will do the same for the deliberations of the
Committee.
The hon.
Gentleman is right to say that the Bill is not simply a Whitehall
rearrangement. He is right to say that it is a public good. He
encourages the Committee to consider the purpose of the statistics
board, but I point out to him that the boards core objectives
are set out in clause 7. In dealing with the amendments, it may help
the Committee if I set out the reasons for the objectives being drafted
as they are. Clause 7 is the cornerstone of the Bill. It is
appropriately succinct, broad and high level, stating that the board
should promote and safeguard the quality, comprehensiveness and good
practice of official statistics. From that core objective flow the
boards functions in relation to the production and assessment
of statistics, which will allow it to deliver. The board will report on
and be judged against the extent to which it delivers on that
objective, with Parliament playing the central role in holding it to
account, supported by the annual report of the board, which it will be
required to lay before Parliament and publish at the end of each
financial year.
Amendment No. 152 seeks to add
to the purposes of the board as set out in the objectives in clause 7.
As I have argued, clause 7 already captures the essence of what the
board has been established to do. It states that the board should
promote and safeguard the quality, comprehensiveness and good practice
of official statistics. I believe the objective to be appropriate as it
stands. The additional statements proposed in the amendments are
unnecessary. I think that if Committee members pause to reflect on what
is in the Bill, they will accept that it is appropriately succinct,
wide in scope and sufficiently high level to serve as the core terms of
reference for the board. Having prompted a useful debate at the start
of our deliberations, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his
amendment.
Amendment
No. 17 is more substantive. It would provide the board with the
authority to
supervise
the production of any official statistics;
and
(b) require any improvements
and corrections that it considers
necessary.
Clauses 8, 12
and 13 already give the board wide monitoring and assessment functions,
but as we have heard, the intended effect of the amendment is to enable
the board to compel action in Departments. That would turn the board
into a directional body, and go against the decentralised system of
statistical production that we have established and chosen to retain in
this country. The decision to retain that system was supported by most
of the respondents to the consultation and, indeed, by the Treasury
Sub-Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for
Sevenoaks.
11.30
am
Mrs.
Villiers:
Clause 29 gives the board a directional power in
relation to the National Statistician. If that is right for the
National Statistician, why is it not right for other Departments? What
practical problems will arise from giving the board more effective
authority to comply with the duties imposed by the
Bill?
John
Healey:
The provision is appropriate to the National
Statisticianthis is dealt with in clause 29because
under the terms of the Bill, she will be
accountable to the board and not to Ministers. That is one way of
putting the statistics system on an independent footing and of removing
the board from direct accountability to Ministers. The power to compel
Departments and Ministers is of an entirely different order. In our
democracy, Ministers are responsible and accountable for allocating the
resources of their Departments, including those resources devoted to
statistical production. Decisions on how to manage the resources and
operation of Departments areproperlytaken by Ministers,
who are answerable to Parliament for those decisions. Giving the board
the power to compel Ministers to take decisions about their
departmental resources and functions would fundamentally change those
relationships of responsibility and accountability.
The hon. Lady and other
Opposition Members are very interested in the model of the National
Audit Office in relation to potential reforms. The NAO does not compel
Ministers or Departments to act. It advises, audits, reports,
challenges and generally equips Parliament better to fulfil its
function of holding Departments and Ministers to account. The NAO does
not direct Ministers or Departments. In the same way, it is
inappropriate to suggest that the statistics board should direct
Ministers, as amendment 17 proposes. Rather than compelling action, the
transparency of the board is one of the key ways in which it delivers
on the objective. It will be the actions and interests of Parliament in
following the work of the board by examining its reports and in holding
Ministers and Departments to account that will play a crucial role in
the development of the system. Those actions and interests will also
play a part in the impact that we have designed the system to have on
the nature and quality of, and confidence in, official statistics in
the long run.
Mrs.
Villiers:
The Minister makes a good case on the problems
of giving a body the power to compel Departments to make particular
decisions and to have particular practices. Does that case not apply
equally well to the National Statistician? Is there not a case for
amending clause 29, so that the boards focus is on
transparency, holding to account, and reporting to Parliament, rather
than on seeking to take decisions for the National
Statistician?
John
Healey:
I am sure that we will deal with this issue when
we get to clause 29. One of the functions of the National Statistician
will be to head the executive officecurrently the Office for
National Statistics. As chief executive of that body, as well as the
Governments lead professional adviser on statistical matters,
he or she will report to the board. Therefore, it is entirely
appropriate that the National Statistician is made accountable to the
board by the Bill. We are legislating because it is not appropriate for
the National Statistician to be accountable to, and therefore under the
general direction of, Ministers, as she is at the moment. I expected
the hon. Lady to welcome that element of the reforms.
I shall make similar but less
forceful comments in relation to amendments 191 and 192, which were
tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South
and Penarth, as I did for amendment 152. Both the
amendments would add to the boards objectives, but, although I
agree with my right hon. Friend that official statistics have an
important role to play in informing local and regional public service
delivery, I do not think that it is sensible to specify that among the
Boards core objectives. The important uses to which official
statistics are put are extremely varied, ever increasing and rapidly
changing. It would not be helpful to specify some and not others in the
legislation, not least becauseas my right hon. Friend would
acceptwe cannot hope for primary legislation to be
exhaustive.
In
addition to the core objective that is set out in the Bill, I expect
the independent board to set out its own, fuller, statement of aims,
objectives, priorities and goals in the medium and short term. That
would give some of the core uses to which it expects official
statistics to be put. I am sure that, in preparing and consulting on
its code, the board will take careful note of the comments and debates
made during proceedings on the Bill.
Alun
Michael:
I rise to press my hon. Friend further. Unless
that objective is made explicit as the expectation of Government and
Parliament, competing pressuresfor instance for academic use
rather than for practical public policy usemay push aside the
importance of statistics being available for local purposes. Surely
that should be at the core of anything that the board sets out. Is that
his
expectation?
John
Healey:
Sir John, it is indeed my expectation that the
needs of users will be at the core of the direction and decisions that
the statistics board takes. I foresee no circumstances in which a
strong concern for public policy and public service delivery at
national, regional or local level, as appropriate, will not be
fundamental to the concerns that the statistics board reflects when it
draws up its code, goes about its operations oras we will
discuss later in the Committees proceedingsappoints it
members, particularly non-executive
members.
I make the
same point on amendment No. 192. The proposed objective does not list
exhaustively all the aspects of quality, comprehensiveness or good
practice that the board will exist to promote and safeguard. It would
not be sensible to include some rather than others, or to believe that
it is possible to construct an exhaustive list for inclusion in the
Bill.
Alun
Michael:
I am trying to understand why my hon. Friend
regards the subject of the amendment as part of a list. It seems to me
that it is central to the Bill. If the board is not to promote
effective use in the public interest, who is to do
so?
John
Healey:
The central concerns for any statistics board,
once it is set up independently, will be the uses to which statistics
are put and the users of those statistics. The desire to see public
service policy and delivery reflected in those concerns is inevitably
going to feature strongly. However, as I have suggested, to specify
that in the Billto elevate it above a rapidly changing, ever
evolving, increasing sources and uses of datais not sensible at
this point. I hope that my right hon. Friend will reflect on
that.
Alun
Michael:
I am trying to understand what my hon. Friend is
saying. Does he expect the board to promote the effective use of
official statistics in the public interest? If he is indicating that
that does not need to be made explicit in the Bill because it is
implicit in the structure and the requirements placed on the board,
that is one thing and I would understand it. However, if he is saying
that it may or may not be important in future, that would be a little
more
disturbing.
John
Healey:
Let me try again. I would expect thatto
be a central concern of the statistics board. I am suggesting to my
right hon. Friend that, at this point, it is more sensible not to
legislate for that matter in the Bill, but to leave it to the judgment
of the board, which will, as I have explained, amplify in a number of
ways the core objectives and standards set out in the Bill. In setting
up this powerful and independent statistics board, it is appropriate to
leave such matters finally to its judgment and to the judgment of those
who are holding the board to account for the code that they devise and
for the discharge of their objectivesin other words, to leave
it to hon. Members and Parliament to scrutinise and hold the board
accountable.
Amendment
No. 194 would ensure that definitions, classifications, standards and
methodologies that are developed by the board are useful locally. In
many ways, the same arguments apply. Again, under clause 9 the
boards duty is wide, so it is not necessary to specify now the
specific ways in which they are to be used. The board will develop
those as appropriate and will be able to promote them widely. In
developing and promoting the definitions, once again I would expect the
board to provide contextual information about how and when to use them,
including their appropriateness at local level. I have no doubt that
the board will wish to develop definitions and classifications on local
and regional issues, such as the regional classifications that my right
hon. Friend is interested in, and will wish to develop ones that can be
applied and used locally. However, at this stage it is not sensible or
right to over-specify such matters in primary legislation. Therefore I
hope that he will ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
The
Chairman:
Order. Can I just say to the Minister, probably
for the benefit of the whole Committee, that in respect of amendments
Nos. 17, 191, 192 and 194, it will not be necessary for the right hon.
Gentleman or any other hon. Member to withdraw his amendment, because
they have not yet been moved? However, they have been debated, so if
hon. Members are minded not to press them to a Division they can simply
not move them at the appropriate time when we are discussing the
relevant clauses. We have discussed those amendments with the lead
amendment in the group, but they have not yet been
moved.
Alun
Michael:
I just want to make one point in concluding the
consideration of the amendments, which have not been moved but have
been discussed as part of this group. My concern about the points made
by these amendments have partly been answered in the
Ministers response; none the less, I encourage him to strengthen
the words that he uses about our expectations of the
board.
I accept that
we do not want the Bill to contain forms of words that are too
prescriptive or that, by specifying one requirement, imply that other
requirements are not necessary. I understand the Ministers
reluctance to accept the detail of my amendment. However, unless the
board is clear that the statistics are going to be used not only by
Government departments or people operating nationally or regionally,
but locally, it could wander away from the expectations of Ministers
and
Parliament.
11.45
am
That point
particularly relates to amendmentNo. 194 because it is surely
a matter of political judgment and generally the expectation of MPs
that statistics are collected in a way that allows aggregation that
makes sense in terms of analysing what is going on in the communities
that we represent not only at a constituency level but at a much more
local level. The figures are useful in terms of small area statistics
and the sort of work on rural development that I referred to earlier.
What is going on under the surface in urban areas is also very
important.
I would
hope that what is spelt out in my three amendments in this group is
something that we as Parliament should make clear that we expect from
the new board. I do not necessarily think that these particular
amendments are necessary, but I found the discussion useful.
The Minister may find one or
two of my other amendments more acceptable. I want to make sure that
this local element is appropriately spelt out and explicit. I shall not
press these amendments to a vote, but I hope very much that during our
discussions the necessity of ensuring the coterminosity of raw
dataallowing proper analysis of statistics in a way that is
useful at a local level to local authorities, to decision makers,
including ourselves, and also to local voluntary organisations, for
instance non-governmental organisationsis made explicit. I hope
my hon. Friend the Minister will reflect on those points. I might push
him a little further when we come to other
amendments.
Mr.
Fallon:
We have had a wide-ranging debate. It is obviously
up to the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth to deal with
his amendments when we reach them.
I am grateful for the support
that amendment No. 17 has had from hon. Members across the Committee.
The hon. Member for Slough was right to draw our attention to the need
to deal somewhere with the accuracy of statistics, not least because we
have had a whole series of corrections and revisions to official
statistics over the years. Poor statistics, somebody once said, are
rather like the 13th stroke of the clock, which is not only misleading
in itself but casts a shadow of doubt over what has gone before.
Obviously there is updating, and there are revisions and so on, but
there are also corrections and that is why I felt that it was important
to put into the statute some power and authority for the board to
supervise accuracy.
What strikes me is that we are
setting up this board and giving it responsibility without giving it
authority. The way in which the Bill is drafted means that the board is
not able to enforce standards. That applies to the code of practice, to
the collection of statistics and so on. In response to this amendment,
the Minister said something very important. He said, This board
is not to be directional. That causes me concern. If the board
is not to be directional, the only conclusion that I can draw is that,
so far as departmental statistics are concerned, we will still have a
system run by Ministers.
The Minister tried to
pray in aid the Treasury Select Committee report. I have a copy of it
to hand. One of the things that we recommended was:
Although departmental
statisticians should remain close to policy colleagues in departments,
they should have formal responsibility to the national statistician for
any statistics they produce which are intended for the public
domain.
That was the
conclusion in paragraph 7. In paragraph 10, on the designation of
systems, we said:
We are nevertheless
concerned that retention of this control by Ministers would undermine
the perceived independence of the
system.
So the Financial
Secretarys reply gives us concern that a system will be
perpetuated, for departmental statistics at least, which is still
ministerially run. I am disappointed, because I thought that the whole
point of the Bill and of setting up the board was to get away from the
idea that Ministers were responsible in the end for Departments
statistics. That is why I want the board to be given the overarching
power where necessary, not to direct or boss around statisticians in
Departments, but to put things right where they believe that there is a
lack of consistency or a series of poor data. I was very disappointed
by the Ministers response. Amendment No. 17 is to clause 7, so
we shall doubtless return to the matter when we reach that
clause.
I am
encouraged by the support that amendment No. 152 has received from
members across the Committee. The wording could of course be polished.
In designing a motto or purpose, we all come up with our own drafting.
I found the Ministers response to the amendment rather thin. He
said that we did not need to state the boards purpose in clause
1 because clause 7 set out objectives. Objectives are not quite the
same as purpose; a purpose is a higher aim. Clause 7 is also limited to
official statistics, which is precisely why I did not include the word
official in my definition.
I shall press the Financial
Secretary one more time. Is he really suggesting that we should vote
out of the Bill a reference to the public good? That is what lies at
the heart of my amendment. It is the idea that we should put it in
statute that the purpose of the board is to act for the public good,
not for the convenience of Ministers or even for the benefit of
Parliament. I cannot believe that he really wants to reject an
amendment that would simply insert the words for the public
good into the statute. I want to give him one more opportunity
to explain why he
should.
John
Healey:
We propose to continue the system for statistics
established in this country for 400 years, since the Government first
started collecting data on imports
and exports. The UKs decentralised system is
overwhelmingly and widely recognised to have great strengths.
Statisticians are kept close to data suppliers and customers, which
gives them a good understanding of their data. They have good working
links with policy makers and are given necessary insights into
developments and future needs. The system also maintains professional
statistics and expertise across government. That is the decentralised
system thatwe proposed in our consultation. It attracted
overwhelming support, including the Treasury Committees
endorsement, and we wish to continue it in the
Bill.
When I said that
directional powers were inappropriate for the statistics board, I drew
an analogy with the National Audit Office. It is an authoritative body
that no one seriously doubts is manipulated by the Government. It does
not have the power to compel Departments and Ministers in the way that
amendment No. 17 suggests. Therefore, it is not appropriate to suggest
that we should seek such powers for the statistics
board.
As I have told
the Committee, the boards central objectives as we have set
them out are succinct, wide in scope, high level and likely to be
independently developed further by the board, when it has been
established and is up and running. That is the right approach. The
amendment would not contribute significantly to setting out the
direction and purpose of the statistics board. If the hon. Member for
Sevenoaks presses the amendment, I shall ask my hon. Friends to resist
it.
Mr.
Fallon:
I am grateful to the Financial Secretary to the
Treasury for trying one more time to persuade me. We shall of course
return to the issue dealt with by amendment No. 17 in clause 7.
However, I emphasise that I am not suggesting that we should
centralise; rather, I suggest, as many outside the House have
suggested, that the board needs an overarching supervisory duty. If I
may say so, it is slightly disingenuous of the Minister to suggest that
I did not say that the current system should continue. Of course we
believe in a decentralised system of statistics, but if we are to put
the proposals on to a better statutory basis, there must be somebody
with the overarching power to supervise the
system.
the
dissemination of statistics for the public
good,
but, although the
hon. Gentleman pointed out that it refers to statistics
rather than official statistics or national statistics, it could drag
the board into a role that was something akin to that of the
Advertising Standards Authority. If a product was perceived to be
better for the public good, say, because it used less energy and the
producers of that product wished to say that in a newspaper, the board
would have to decide whether that statistic should appear in a
newspaper, because a newspaper is a means of dissemination. I am sure
that the hon. Gentleman would agree that it would not be in our
interests to include that in the Bill.
Mr.
Fallon:
Yes, of course it is possible to pick holes in the
drafting of the amendment, and perhaps legal training helps with that.
If the hon. Gentleman wants to offer an improvement to the word
dissemination,
I shall be perfectly happy to accept that. However, the core issue is
why we should not specify in statute that the purpose of the board is
for the public good. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury is a
generous man, so I wonder whether I could try him one more
time.Is he suggesting that clause 7 could not more
appropriately contain a reference to the public good? Is he saying that
nowhere in the Bill would he accept a reference to the phrase
the public good? Is that his
position?
John
Healey:
I have dealt with the amendments before the
Committee. I have made my arguments and I shall let them rest. If the
hon. Gentleman presses the amendment, I shall leave it to the Committee
to decide what view to
take.
Question put,
That the amendment be
made:
The
Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes
12.
Division
No.
1
]
AYESNOES
Question
accordingly negatived.
Clause 1 ordered to stand
part of the
Bill.
12
noon
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