Clause
7
Objective
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Hoban: I have a straightforward question for the Minister
about whether the numbering in clause 7(1) is correct. The clause sets
out the objective of the
board:
“In the
exercise of its functions under sections 8 to 19 the Board is to have
the objective of reporting and
safeguarding”
what are
then referred to specifically as “official statistics”.
However, when I look at clauses 8 to 19, clauses 8 and 9 apply to
official statistics, as does clause 11 on pre-release access, but
clauses 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 refer specifically to
“national statistics”, not “official
statistics”.
I
am concerned that someone reading clause 7 casually might assume that
the reference applied to national statistics and was not limited to
official statistics. I wonder whether the drafting should have
been
“sections 8, 9, 10
and 12”
instead of
“sections 8 to
19”.
Fiona
Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab): I am probably a lone heretic on
the Committee in that I am not sure that I buy the fundamental premise
of the Bill, which is that statistics will automatically be more
trusted if they are taken out of the hands of politicians. I fear that
we are falling into a trap, in the Bill and elsewhere, in somehow
believing the message that politicians are inclined to do things that
are scurrilous and bad, for their personal advantage. However, the
clause seemsto be something that everyone can sign up to
enthusiastically. We need to have mechanisms to deliver what the clause
promises, such as
“the
quality of official
statistics”
and
“their
impartiality, accuracy and
relevance”.
I have bored
members of the Committee enough on this matter, and I promise them that
I will not do so again, but I have said that the most important
official series of statistics—the census and the inter-year
census figures—in relation to the town that I represent is
inaccurate. A politician’s input could help in that
regard.
Let me explain.
The hon. Member for Fareham referred to the fact that officials who
prepare statistical series are working in Pimlico. He said that they
were doing a good job, and I believe that, in most cases, they are,
except in the matter on which I have bored the Committee. A
politician’s input can bring to bear experiences beyond Pimlico,
beyond Kent and beyond
Newport from around the country that can hold the system accountable. As
for the errors in the statistics of the Office for National Statistics,
the Minister for Local Government reacted more positively to
representations made on behalf of Slough than did ONS
officials.
The
Chairman:
Order. I remind the hon. Lady of the objectives
under clause 7. Will she speak to
them?
Fiona
Mactaggart:
Indeed. I was wondering whether the Minister
would, given his present duty to achieve the objectives under
subsection (2)(a) of the clause in respect of impartiality, accuracy
and relevance of statistics, including ONS mid-year estimates, be
willing to meet me and Slough council to discuss such matters in
relation to the town that I
represent?
Julia
Goldsworthy:
I have a brief comment that follows on from
what the hon. Lady said. The clause sets out laudable objectives, but I
suppose that the key issue is how to deliver them. It relates to
official statistics, so it has been widely welcomed. The statistics
user forum said that it
was
“pleased to note that
ensuring access to official statistics is specifically mentioned as
part of the good practice the board is intended to
promote”.
Does the
Minister have a view on whether having a code that is applicable to
official statistics as well as national statistics would help to
deliver that
aim?
Mr.
Fallon:
I am a supporter of the Bill, but I am in the
words of the hon. Member for Slough not a particular enthusiast of the
clause for a different reason. It is an example of incredible dreary
drafting. It is late in the Bill to describe its objective. As I said
on Tuesday, that should have happened at the beginning. The wording of
the clause is rather humdrum. I do not know whether parliamentary
counsel had an off day, but to set up such matters and say simply that
the objective is to promote and safeguard quality and good practice,
without setting a higher purpose, is a
mistake.
There is stuff
in the clause about accessibility and officialdom, but where in the
clause is reference made to the higher purpose of the Bill? The
Minister encouraged us this morning when he spoke of the Bill being
part of the new settlement. Well, the new settlement does not have a
poet. It is groundhog stuff. I should like to have seen in the clause
some recognition of the wider public good that Ministers, to their
credit, have said is the point of the new arrangements. It is not a
matter simply of enhancing confidence in official statistics, checking
quality as the clause describes, or checking up and spreading good
practice. We need somewhere in the objectives of the board a reference
to matters not simply being for the convenience of Ministers or for the
benefit of Parliament, but “for the public
good”.
I urge
the Minister to consider those words, if it is possible to do so even
at this late stage. I know that he asked the Committee to vote against
my amendment to clause 1, a matter to which we cannot return, because
that was a reference to other duties. I included in that definition of
the purpose of the board the phrase “for the public
good”.
The Minister clearly felt that
the words were not appropriate on Tuesday. He certainly felt that they
were not appropriate in that particular clause. However, if they are
appropriate and he accepts the principle that this new arrangement is
for the public good, those words ought to be incorporated into this
clause. I would like to give him a further opportunity to say why they
should not
be.
The
Chairman:
In responding, I take it that the Minister will
be writing to the right hon. Lady as to whether or not he is going to
Slough and does not intend to put it on the face of the
Bill?
John
Healey:
Mr. Olner, I am grateful for that
guidance. I thought for a moment that I might have overlooked an
amendment tabled to the Bill. This is an important clause. In many
ways, it is the cornerstoneof the Bill because it establishes
the board’s core purposes, something already discussed under
previous amendments.
May I say to the hon. Member for
Sevenoaks that I will pass his comments, on the drafting being humdrum
and dreary, to parliamentary counsel, but I shall make it clear that I
do not agree with them. As Chairman of the Treasury Sub-Committee, the
hon. Gentleman has—this is a serious point—studied this
area and the provisions in the Bill probably more closely than many
others. In view of the fact that he has returned to the question of
higher purpose and brings particular authority to it, I will reflect
further on his concern about the public good.
On the question raised by the
hon. Member for Fareham, I hope that no one reads this legislation in a
casual way. His puzzlement may come from the fact that national
statistics are a sub-group of official statistics. That clarification
may help in reading the cross-references that
he—
Mr.
Hoban:
In the interests of accuracy, with which much of
this Bill is concerned, would it not be better for clause 7 to be
precise about what the objectives relate to and how the clause
interacts with subsequent clauses rather than contain some catch-all
definition? I expected the Minister to say that national statistics
were a sub-set of official statistics. However, I still think that we
need to be much more precise about how clause 7 interacts with others
in the
Bill.
John
Healey:
In future proceedings, I will bear it in mind that
the hon. Gentleman knows the answers to the questions that he asks me
before he asks them. There is a distinction because national statistics
are quite a significant set—approximately 1,300. Under these
proposals, they are sufficiently important to have a code of practice
that the board will draw up, one by which they will be assessed and
approved.
In many
ways, that is the answer to the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne.
It is important to concentrate the board’s attention, and its
assessment and auditing function, on the statistics that are most
important. The national statistics—which were established under
our national framework for statistics
when we introduced them following reforms in 2000—give us an
established list. They cover many of the most important statistics that
we all use and depend on. I think that the hon. Lady accepts that
proposing similar arrangements for official statistics is impractical
given the wide scope that the Committee recognises would exist in the
definition in clause 6. 2.30
pm
My hon. Friend
the Member for Slough is not heretical but honest and right to observe
that simply putting the production or management of national statistics
on that basis by taking Ministers out of the current set of
responsibilities will not automatically restore trust in official
statistics. It will not. In many ways, that will depend on two things.
Its operation and the authority with which the board establishes itself
will be important, but in the end, those who produce statistics build
up authority and trust by being consistent, ensuring good quality and
meeting user needs. That is why I have been at pains to stress that the
quality of statistics, as much as their integrity and credibility, is
an underlying aim of the proposed
reforms.
My hon. Friend
the Member for Slough has been tireless in drawing the particular
concerns of Slough to the attention of officials and Ministers. She has
pursued them with great determination and energy and argued the case
sharply. If she would like to discuss them directly with me and the
lead officials concerned and to bring experts from Slough to join her,
I will by all means be happy to meet her, particularly if it means that
we shall not have any Slough amendments to the
Bill.
Question put
and agreed
to.
Clause 7
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
8
Monitoring
and reporting of official
statistics
Julia
Goldsworthy:
I beg to move amendmentNo. 87, in
clause 8, page 4, line 30, leave
out ‘may’ and insert
‘shall’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenientto
discuss the following amendments: No. 18, in
clause 8, page 4, line 33, at
end insert—
‘(d) the funding
and staffing resources allocated to the production of any official
statistics,’.
No.
193, in
clause 8, page 4, line 33, at
end insert—
‘(d) the
effective use of statistics to inform public
policy,’.
No.
88, in
clause 8, page 4, line 35, leave
out ‘may’ and insert
‘shall’.
No.
99, in
clause 8, page 4, line 35, at
end insert—
‘(4) Where it
considers it to be appropriate, the Board shall provide public comment
on cases where it considers that official statistics have been
incorrectly interpreted by ministers, departments or other civil
servants.’.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
The Minister has just said that he is keen to
ensure that the board does not take on too much in its role in official
statistics, but clause 8(1) says:
“The Board is to monitor
the production and publication of official
statistics.”
That seems to
me like a responsibility that could in theory be quite
weighty.
Amendment No.
87 would give the clause a better sense of balance. The explanatory
notes say that subsection
(1)
“requires the board to
monitor the production and publication of official statistics. This
role draws on the duties under the current framework for national
statistics”.
Yet
subsection (2) says that the
board
“may report any
concerns it has about—
(a)
the quality of any official
statistics,
(b) good practice in
relation to any official statistics,
or
(c) the comprehensiveness of
any official
statistics”.
The board is
required to monitor statistics but not to report problems.
Furthermore, under subsection
(3), the board is not required to publish any report that it
undertakes. Amendment No. 87 highlights and seeks to redress that
imbalance in the clause and make its weak language a bit stronger. We
have been discussing restoring public confidence, but there is no scope
for trust in the current proposals. The amendment is fairly
straightforward, and I see no need to dwell on it.
I shall touch on amendments Nos.
18 and 193. We note that there are special funding arrangements outside
the spending review process. It could be helpful to put them into the
Bill in order to have the option to monitor such resources. Amendment
No. 193, which was tabled by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South
and Penarth, deals with issues in a similar vein to those raised
throughout the debate. With those remarks, I look forward to the
Minister’s response and his justification for the
clause’s weak phrasing, particularly in subsections (2) and
(3).
Mr.
Fallon:
Without necessarily rejecting any of arguments
that the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne put forward, I wish to
speak specifically to my amendment No. 18.
I fear that I must again
criticise the drafting of the Bill, thus ensuring that I shall not be
invited to parliamentary counsels’ summer drinks party, if they
have such a thing. The problem with the clause, particularly subsection
(2), is that it is exclusive. It lists the only things about which the
board may have concerns. If we are to confine its role to that of
commentator, warner, monitor or a softer version of a regulator, it is
a mistake then to limit the areas about which it may express concerns.
With my amendment, I seek to add an important category, of which there
may well be others: the funding and staffing resources
available.
The hon.
Lady might have slightly misunderstood my amendment. I am not concerned
here by the funding and staffing available to national statistics,
although we are concerned about that elsewhere. Indeed, I welcome the
arrangements that have been made to push that outside the three-year
comprehensive spending review. Obviously, what is
important to the quality of statistics is the amount of funding and
staffing resources devoted to them within each Department. There are parallels to be drawn.
The Treasury Committee, on which I have the honour of serving, recently
took evidence from Mary Kagan, who is a senior official at the
Treasury, as the Minister will know. One of her roles is to ensure that
the finance function is properly discharged in other Departments, and
she has been busily ensuring that we have more accountants and fully
qualified financial officers in each Department. That role, for which
the National Statistician had some responsibility in days gone by, is
exactly the sort of role that I foresaw for the board: ensuring that
that function is being properly exercised in each Department. I
envisaged that if it had any concerns about budget cuts or a Department
not giving priority to this area, it would be able to report them, but
those are not matters about which it may be concerned under the
clause.
It is a
mistake to try to list and narrow down the areas about which the board
may have concerns. We were told earlier that we should wait until the
board has been set up and let it decide what it wants to decide, but
with this clause the Minister invites Parliament to lay down the areas
to which the board’s concern should be limited. That is a
mistake.
The funding
and staffing resources that are allocated to statistics in each
Department is a primary area in which we want to ensure that the
statistics board has a handle on what is happening. If it does not, it
might not know why there is inconsistency or a problem in reporting a
particular line of statistics. It needs to be able to go in and find
out why. It may be that there are not enough statisticians in the
Department or that the statistics division of the Department is not
getting its fair share of the departmental budget allocation.
There is a strong case for
rewriting subsection (2), or, if the Government are not prepared to do
that, at least widening the categories about which the board may be
concerned.
Alun
Michael:
I rise to speak to my amendmentNo. 193.
I start from the position that the clause is helpful because it gives
the board responsibility for monitoring and reporting on official
statistics. Thereis no doubt that quality, good practice and
comprehensiveness are key to the constant improvement of official
statistics and their use. I draw attention to the words “and
their use”.
I
am pleased that there are two stages in the process: the board is
expected first to comment to those who are responsible and may then
publish its findings. That process will give bodies a chance to listen
to what the board says and respond, and it therefore
providesan opportunity for a dialogue about the quality of
statistics.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
Although the board is required to monitor,
there is no requirement for it to report on that monitoring, or to
publish it. That is the concern that has been
expressed.
Alun
Michael:
No. The point is that the board may publish its
findings or any report, and it may do so
after a dialogue with the organisation that produces the statistics.
That may be productive and improve the statistics with an explanation
of why they are being produced, and so on. In these days of greater
transparency, one would expect the board generally to publish its
findings, but not necessarily in advance of that dialogue. That is why
the clause is
constructive.
My
amendment No. 193 addresses the issue of purpose—what the
scrutiny is for—and answers that question: the board should
report on concerns about whether statistics are being used properly
“to inform public policy”. We can all think of examples
of statistics being wrongly used, misunderstood or misinterpreted, not
least by the media in search of a quick headline. The one killer factor
seems to justify a headline, rather than asking what the statistics
tell us about real life and what response is appropriate for public,
non-governmental and private organisations to make to improve the
situation and quality of life for people.
Misuse of statistics can be
damaging, especially at local level. Those of us who have worked in
inner-city areas will be used to one statistic being pulled out and
used to cast aspersions on a whole area in a way that can be damaging
to the local community. For those of us who believe passionately in an
evidence-based approach to public policy, it is crucial to lift the
quality of use of official statistics.
Misuse or lazy use of statistics
often lets decision makers off the hook, because they say that the
statistics were misinterpreted or not used properly, so they need not
listen to the criticism. We need disciplined and hard-edged use of
statistics to inform debate and to challenge decision makers at every
level. It is also important for decision makers to use statistics as
part of the process of priority setting and self-criticism. There are
many good examples of that in central Government, local government and
many other bodies, but it is not consistent across all
organisations.
The
purpose of my amendment is to make it clear that statistics are not
just for academic purposes. It is all too possible to produce
statistics that are interesting, but show what was happening 20 years
ago, not what is happening now. As a local community worker, my
interest has always been in the use of action research, so that the
facts address the actions and decisions taken now. I hope that there
will be that sense of urgency in the way the board pursues its
activities. The amendment makes it clear that the statistics are not
just for academic purposes or for looking back over long periods; they
are for practical purposes and looking
forward.
I therefore
invite my hon. Friend to accept my amendment and to put in the Bill a
power for the board to report any concerns about the use of statistics
to the person responsible for them and, more widely, through a report
in the public domain. I emphasise that “use” includes
misuse or failure to use statistics in that context. I am happy to
offer my hon. Friend an alternative—to tell us clearly and
firmly that the board will indeed be able to act in that way because
the words that I seek to put in the Bill are understood to be contained
in the words in the clause about comprehensiveness and so on, and that,
proportionate to the importance of the issue, he expects the board to
do just that.
Again, I hope that what I have
said will find favour with the Financial Secretary because my intention
is to address the practicalities of how statistics are used at every
level of the development of public policy and service
delivery.
2.45
pm
Dr.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab): I wish to
speak to amendment No. 193. Clearly, the relationship between public
policy, policy making and statistics is important and we have rehearsed
that argument well already. It is relevant not only to Departments and
academics, as my right hon. Friend said, but to policy makers,
including those at a local level. There are now a number of training
programmes that seek to train local councillors and others about how to
use statistics effectively. They aim to make them aware of the vast
amount of information that is contained, particularly at small-area
level, and how that can not only influence their policy making but be
used to review the effectiveness of their policies and to plan
ahead.
The
Treasury Committee, on page 26 of its report, outlines various
functions of the board. They include assuring itself that the
statistical system takes account of the needs of all users. Presumably
that means those involved in public policy making as well as other
users. My question to the Minister is, how will that be assured? If it
is recognised as a vital role for the board, should it not be included
in clause 8, or clause 7(1) for that matter? I know that clause 32
deals with advisory committees and says that they should help the
boards to address user needs, but as far as I can see that is not in
the Bill. Perhaps it should
be.
Mr.
Hoban:
I want to address amendment No. 99, which builds
partly on the contribution made by the right hon. Member for Cardiff,
South and Penarth when he talked about how statistics are used and the
concern raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks on the
exclusivity of the list of areas that the board might comment upon in
clause 8(2). We want to ensure through the amendment that the board
feels that it has the opportunity, the power and the right to speak out
on those occasions where it feels that official statistics have been
incorrectly interpreted by Ministers, Departments or other civil
servants.
When I
considered the scope of the responsibilities of the Statistics
Commission, I found that that was not explicitly covered, but it was a
role that it performed. I want to demonstrate why it is important that
the amendment be made by referring to some work that the commission
undertook. A noted academic researcher, Professor Tymms, who is based
in the constituency of the hon. Member for City of Durham, looked at
exam performance over time. He commented in a press article a couple of
years ago that simply because the key stage 2 results had gone up, that
did not mean that there had been an improvement in
standards.
That comment
was referred to the Statistics Commission, which went through a
thorough process of consulting statistics users, and talking to
academics and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. It published
a report in which it commented on how
statistics should be used and interpreted and the
limitations that can be applied to statistics, as well as the caveats
that should be disclosed alongside the publication of statistics so
that they can be used properly. Paragraph 11 of that report
states: “We feel
that public presentation of the key stage scores in statistical
releases should include a clear statement about the uses to which the
data may be put, and the limitations on it in respect of those uses. In
that statement, it should be recognised that part of the rapid rise in
test scores from 1995 to 2000 can be explained by factors other than a
rise in standards.”
That
criticism may not necessarily be directed at politicians, but it also
said:
“Government
departments have usually failed to mention any caveats about other
possible reasons for rising test scores in their public comments. This
may partly reflect a failure of communications on the part of the
education research community.”
In a sense, there are examples
already of how statistics, for various reasons, may be misinterpreted
by Ministers, civil servants and people engaged in political debate. It
is important that the board has the explicit opportunity to comment on
the misuse of statistics. That provision is set out in amendment No.
99.
Stewart
Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP): I support amendment No. 99 as
well. It is attractive and offers the possibility of a mechanism that
might restrain some of the looser or, on certain occasions,
deliberately inaccurate representations of statistics. I shall speak
briefly and go back to the general expenditure revenue Scotland
caveats, which I described in considerable detail on Second Reading.
Just to remind the Committee, the statistics that describe the
deficit
“should therefore
be used with some
caution.”
The income tax
figure was not based on a known or fixed taxpayer population. The
VAT
“results should be
treated with caution”.
The
method used to determine landfill tax gives
an
“underestimate of the
total attributable to
Scotland”.
Corporation
tax
“is exceptionally
difficult to estimate for Scotland, due to both conceptual difficulties
and a lack of data. Therefore, the estimate...should be treated
with extra
caution.”
One of
the principal conclusions is that the expenditure is wrong, yet even
with all those caveats on errors in expenditure and in income, certain
Ministers and politicians, mainly in Scotland, will take those raw
data, aggregate them or put them alongside an equally flawed gross
domestic product calculation that excludes some £22 billion in
value from the Scottish sector of the North sea, which would be the GDP
figure, and calculate a debt for Scotland of more than £11
billion, saying that there is an annual deficit of 12 per cent. of GDP.
We cannot find a country in the world—not even the Democratic
Republic of the Congo—with an annual deficit of such extent.
None the less, those figures are
used.
Amendment No. 99
offers some restraint, even if only to allow the board to reiterate the
caveats that are already published in the commentary that runs
alongside the data. That alone would be helpful. I anticipate that
there might be one danger with the amendment: it may draw civil
servants into the political arena, where they ought not to be. However,
it suggests that the board does the work and offers protection for the
statisticians.
Senior people involved in the
production of such material do comment publicly. Dr. Andrew Goudie, the
Scottish Executive’s chief economic adviser, went public this
week to confirm what the husband and wife economic team, the Cuthberts,
identified in the current Scottish Executive investigation of GERS,
which is the underestimate of English identifiable spend by some
£4.4 billion and a corresponding overestimate of spending in
Scotland—the share of non-identifiable spend—of some
£400 million. Dr. Goudie was able to do that only because he was
a witness before a
Committee.
With the
protection of the board standing in the way of the economists and
statisticians, I repeat that if amendment No. 99 allowed only the
caveats that are already published in commentaries sitting alongside
statistics, it would be very welcome
indeed.
John
Healey:
This has been a useful debate in respect of a
number of points. I welcome the contributions from hon.
Members.
The hon.
Member for Fareham mentioned the Statistics Commission and cited some
of its good work. In establishing the duty of the board under clause 8
to monitor the production and publication of official statistics and
enabling it to report and publish its findings on the quality of good
practice in relation to the comprehensiveness of official statistics,
we drew on the similar responsibility currently placed on the
non-statutory Statistics
Commission.
The Bill is
building on the work and approach established by the Statistics
Commission by reflecting its functions and enhancing them by putting
them into legislation, thereby entrenching the independence of those
functions. The clause enhances them further by placing a statutory
obligation on the board to monitor the production and publication of
official statistics by the Government and their
agencies.
That will
provide the board with a very wide discretion to report to the person
responsible for those statistics and to publish its concerns about any
aspects of quality, good practice or comprehensiveness. However, we
propose to leave it to the independent board to decide on the
appropriate response when it has a concern, or a potential concern. We
expect the board to bring its collective expertise and experience to
bear on its judgments in each case. That will allow the board to select
from a range of approaches within its discretion, depending on the
relative importance, or the risk, attached to particular
cases.
Ultimately, the
Bill will allow some scope for informality in how the board might deal
with a concern, or a potential concern. For example, in the case of a
media report that the board believes is worthy of further exploratory
inquiry or questioning, it is sensible to allow it the discretion to do
that without requiring it necessarily to publish that fact because it
constitutes a concern, which is what amendmentsNos. 87 and 88
would require it to
do.
I say to the hon.
Member for Falmouth and Camborne that the framing of the measure is not
weak, but sensible. What she proposes is disproportionate; it would
place an undue burden on the board to report and publish in all manner
of situations, which may not be sensible or appropriate. We would not
want the
board to have to publish a report every time it made an inquiry to the
head of a profession in a Department on an issue of concern, or
potential concern, that may have been raised with it. If that concern
was properly and fully settled by the head of a profession in a
Department, we would want the board to have the discretion to complete
its function in response to such a situation and not be required to
publish a report. Nevertheless, the board can
report; it can publish its concerns whenever it thinks that necessary.
It can ensure that transparency is a key discipline and feature of the
new system as a form of gaining credibility and authority, but it has
the discretion under the clause to use appropriately and according to
its own judgment whatever it feels is important. Surely that must be
the right response, given that it is an independent board; it is well
placed to judge for itself how best to fulfil its objectives.
Parliament will also play an important role in commenting and
questioning the board if it feels that the board is not fulfilling its
obligations. I hope that, in the light of that explanation, the hon.
Member for Falmouth and Camborne will not press her
amendment.
Amendment
No. 18 was tabled by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks. I hope he accepts
from what I have already said that the drafting of clause 8 reflects
the objectives that the Committee has agreed should stand part of the
Bill under clause 7. Most importantly, it is not excluding, it is not
limiting and it is very wide in scope. The broad range of powers that
the board already has will enable it to report on funding and resources
when they are relevant to the issues of comprehensiveness and good
practice or the quality of
statistics.
3
pm
Both my right
hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth and my hon.
Friend the Member for City of Durham were principally and refreshingly
concerned about user needs. I hope to assure them. Their amendment
seeks to permit the board to report on concerns about the effective use
of statistics to inform public policy, but that is already
permitted—indeed, it is expected of the board—as an
aspect of good practice.
If the board considers that the
statistical underpinning for a policy is inadequate, it could criticise
the quality of its statistical base, including its coherence, relevance
and comprehensiveness. If it considers that improper use has been made
of statistics to support a particular policy, it may criticise the
quality or relevance of the statistics, or any dubious practice.
Ultimately, however, responsibility for the formulation of the policy
itself lies with Ministers.
Alun
Michael:
My hon. Friend said that the formulation of
policy would lie with Ministers. At local level, of course, it would
lie with the bodies responsible. Presumably, that would be open to
comment in the same way, would it
not?
John
Healey:
The board would be empowered and expected to
report, and to publish its views, on anything connected with official
statistics, as defined in the Bill.
I hope to reassure the hon.
Members for Fareham and for Dundee, East. On amendment No. 99, the
board is already empowered under clause 8. In other words, if the board
judges that a comment by a Minister, a Department or a civil servant is
not in keeping with good practice in relation to official statistics,
it can report and publish its findings in that respect.
I hope that I have dealt with
the concerns that lay behind the amendments. I hope that
amendmentNo. 87 will not be pressed to a Division. I hope that
the sponsors of the other amendments will consider not pressing them
when we reach them.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
I have listened carefully to the Financial
Secretary’s response, and I am partly reassured. However,
although he made much of the board’s independence, it is
important in the interests of public confidence in national statistics
that that is accompanied by openness and certainty. The board may have
a responsibility to monitor official statistics, but there must surely
be a commensurate responsibility to report.
Following on from the comments
of the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, informal
negotiations might indeed take place, but the point at which the report
must be published is not specified. If the clause is amended as my hon.
Friend the Member for Twickenham and I suggest, the report will be a
matter of public record, so that there will be no shadow of doubt about
the board’s independence. On that basis, I should like to press
the amendment to a Division.
Question put, That the
amendment be
made:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes
9.
Division
No.
7
]
Blackman-Woods,
Dr.
Roberta
Question
accordingly negatived.
Amendment proposed: No.
88, in clause 8, page 4,line 35, leave out ‘may’
and insert ‘shall’.—[Julia
Goldsworthy.]
Question
put, That the amendment be made:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes
9.
Division
No.
8
]
Blackman-Woods,
Dr.
Roberta
Question
accordingly negatived.
Question proposed, That
the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr.
Gauke:
I have a quick question for the Financial
Secretary. Under subsection (3), the board has the power to
“publish its findings or any report
under this section.”
I
should be grateful to him for confirmation that that subsection is not
restricted to the provisions of subsection (2), which refers to the
statistical concerns that the board may report.
No doubt, the vast majority of
interest will be in what the board has to say about its concerns, but
one could see the board producing a regular series of statistics about,
for example, the comprehensiveness of waiting list statistics. It may
not be concerned at a specific time, but it may wish to produce a
series of reports. As I read subsection (3), it is not restrictive, but
I should be grateful to the Financial Secretary for confirmation that
the board can publish its findings or a report on any matter that
relates to the production or publication of professional statistics,
and not just when it has concerns.
John
Healey:
I can give the hon. Gentleman that reassurance.
The provision in subsection (3) is not confined to the concerns laid
out in subsection (2). When the board monitors the production and
publication of official statistics, it will be able to publish its
findings on aspects that range wider than simply the concerns set out
in subsection (2).
Question put and agreed
to.
Clause 8
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause 9
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
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