Clause
13
Re-assessment
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part ofthe
Bill.
John
Healey:
This is the first of a series of
clauses that provide important supplementary functions for the
statistics board. The others—clauses 14 to 17—deal with
programmes of assessment, principles and procedures, lists of national
statistics and transitional provisions. Clause 13 provides for the
reassessment of statistics, designated as national statistics under the
previous clause, in order to determine whether they continue to comply
with the code of practice. Thereafter, their designation as national
statistics can be either confirmed or cancelled. This process will
apply either because the statistics have been assessed previously by
the board as meeting the code or because they are national statistics
at the commencement of the new system. I suspect and
hope
that there will be rather less contention around this and some of the
subsequent clauses, but nevertheless it is important and I commend it
to the
Committee.
Rob
Marris:
I would like to ask my hon. Friend about the time
frame for clauses 13 to 15, because I do not see one. Clause 16 refers
to “once every financial year”, and clause 17 contains
transitional provisions for the old regime to continue until the new
one is in place, but clauses 13 and, as I read them, 14 and 15, set no
time limit on the board and could leave us struggling on under the old
regime indefinitely. That seems rather unsatisfactory. Has he thought
about including a time limit in the clauses to ensure that the board
carries out its functions within, for example, a year of the Act
receiving Royal
Assent?
John
Healey:
My hon. Friend is right. It would be undesirable
and unacceptable for the transitional period to struggle on for a long
time. I explained earlier that I want to move quickly as the
legislation proceeds through Parliament and to appoint a chairman of
the shadow board. With the good will of those who want the system to
work, I expect and hope that the board will be up and running without
undue delay. This will be one of its core functions and something to
which I expect it to give its attention early on. In principle, he
might have put his finger on a potential problem, but in practice I do
not share his concerns. Clearly, a fixed and precise timetable is
difficult to legislate for. It will depend on the board, which will in
many ways determine the pace of
progress.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Clause 13
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clauses
14 to 17 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
18
Production
of
statistics
Dr.
Cable:
I beg to move amendment No. 124, in
clause 18, page 8, line 15, leave
out
“itself”.
This
might be a purely semantic grappling point that need not detain us for
long. However, I was struck by the fact that, throughout, the Bill
makes reference to, “the board may”, or “the board
must”, or “the board shall”, or “the board
is”, but suddenly the parliamentary draftsman got excited and
wrote, the “board may itself produce”. It may just be
purely a coincidence and a case of the parliamentary draftsman getting
a bit bored and feeling the need for a little variety, but it seems
rather pointless. If there should be any point of emphasis, this is
probably not the place to put it. The thrust of the Bill is that the
board will be responsible not just for oversight but for production of
statistics. As has been explained, that will operate through Chinese
walls and it will be the National Statistician who carries out the
production. So this is a very odd place to emphasise the board’s
role.
On that
probably extremely pedantic little point of redrafting, perhaps we
might achieve some results with the Government on this issue, and I ask
the Minister whether he will ask the parliamentary draftsman to think
again.
5.15
pm
John
Healey:
All the scrutiny to which the Committee is
subjecting the Bill is important, and I would not brand it as pedantic
in any respect.
I am
not sure that the amendment would make a significant difference to the
clause, although I would say that it would make it a little less clear,
rather than clearer. The intention behind the drafting of this
particular point in the clause is to make it clear that, unlike the
preceding clauses, it is about statistics that the board produces
rather than the statistics produced by other organisations, such as
Departments, which the board monitors. I think that the wording in the
Bill probably helps to preserve that clarity, and I hope that the hon.
Gentleman will not feel it necessary to press the matter to a
vote.
Mr.
Gauke:
Will the Minister give
way?
Rob
Marris:
Will the Minister give
way?
John
Healey:
I am not at all surprised that my hon. Friend the
Member for Wolverhampton, South-West wishes to intervene on that point,
but I shall give way first to the hon. Member for South-West
Hertfordshire.
Mr.
Gauke:
One explanation is that perhaps the parliamentary
draftsman shared the surprise of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton,
South-West and other observers that the board itself has a role both in
scrutinising and in producing statistics.
John
Healey:
I am not sure whether Mrs. Gauke has
been studying the detailed provisions of the Bill, but that is an
interesting thesis.
Rob
Marris:
I know that we do not wish to be detained too much
on this, but can my hon. Friend perhaps say why the word
“itself” does not appear in subsection (2), making it
read, “The Board may itself at any time publish”? If he
is right that the inclusion of “itself” in subsection (1)
leads to greater emphasis and greater clarity, surely that greater
emphasis and greater clarity—which I must say to him that I
doubt—would also be needed in subsection
(2).
John
Healey:
I am slightly surprised by my hon. Friend. As I
have explained, in subsection (1), clearly the emphasis on
“itself” is to try to make clear the distinction between
statistics produced elsewhere and statistics produced under the aegis
of the board, in other words by the current Office for National
Statistics. Clearly the publication of information or advice given
regarding statistics produced under subsection (1) does not require
that construction in order to give the board the freedom and the remit
to do so.
The
Chairman:
Order. Before I call Dr.
Cable, I would like to remind hon. Members that it is unusual for
amendments that have been grouped to be selected for a separate
Division, as happened in the last grouping.
Members should indicate during their remarks if they wish to have a
separate Division on a grouped amendment, which may then be moved
formally. The Member moving the lead amendment should also be clear in
winding up as to whether they wish to withdraw or press the
amendment.
Dr.
Cable:
Thank you for that advice, Mr. Olner. I
think that my English grammar is a bit better than my knowledge of
parliamentary procedure, so I will persist with the point that I am
trying to make.
I
would have thought that the Government might have rolled over easily on
this issue, but I can see that one should never assume anything. If it
is the Government’s intention to do what the Minister wants,
surely the sentence should read, “The Board may produce and
publish its own statistics”. Is that not the point that he is
trying to make? Surely, if we are in the business of trying to improve
the language, that would be the way to do
it.
Alun
Michael:
Would the words that the hon. Gentleman has just
used imply that the board could then publish only statistics that it
owned?
Dr.
Cable:
Indeed, that might create problems of its own. I
should not indulge in improvised drafting, but the drafting as it
stands certainly does not achieve the objective that the Minister said
it was designed to achieve. I have no intention of pushing the
amendment to a vote, as the issue is not a major point of substance and
policy, but the Government should perhaps be a little flexible and
think
again.
Stewart
Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP): If the hon. Gentleman reads
the whole clause again, he may find the Financial Secretary a little
more forthcoming. The clause
says:
“The
Board may itself produce and publish statistics relating to any
matter”,
and so on. It
then says that the board cannot do that for Scotland, Wales or Northern
Ireland without consent, but no consent is required by the Treasury for
the board to produce statistics on any other matter, including economic
matters. With that pointed out, the Financial Secretary might look a
little more kindly on redrafting the
clause.
Dr.
Cable:
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That
the clause stand part ofthe Bill.
Mrs.
Villiers:
The clause provides a welcome opportunity to
address matters relating to devolution and the problems that have
arisen from the fragmentation of statistics across the UK. The reason
for that is the fact that subsections (3) to (5) place limits on the
board’s activities in relation to so-called devolved statistics,
to which the hon. Member for Dundee, East just referred.
The Opposition made it plain
earlier that we believe that the functions set out in the clause should
be those of the National Statistician and not the board. We have
debated that at length already and we do not need to go back over the
groundwork. However, just to reprise that, it would be useful if the
Minister could clarify whether “board” in the clause is
taken to include what is now the ONS. That is important in addressing
the devolution issues, because under the clause it seems as if the ONS
will be prevented from producing so-called devolved statistics without
the permission of the relevant devolved Administration. No doubt the
Minister will correct me if I have misinterpreted it, but that seems to
be how the clause
works. That looks like
an element of political control, which goes against the thrust of
giving independence to statistical services and to the board. If a
Minister in a devolved Administration felt, for example, that a
statistic might expose policy failures on their part, the clause would
presumably enable him or her to bar the ONS from collecting it. There
seems to be no comparable restriction for English statistics. The
clause seems to involve a reduced level of independence for statistics
relating to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I would welcome the
Minister’s clarification of whether I have understood the clause
correctly, and if so, of what the justification for that
is.
Another potential
undesirable consequence of subsections (3) to (5) is the further
fragmentation of statistics across the UK, which leads to the general
issue that I should like to address. The proposed application of the
new framework across the devolved Administrations is welcome—it
is right that the areas where government is devolved should produce
statistics that reflect their own local circumstances and meet the
needs of local users—but as the Treasury Committee pointed
out:
“Equally
important...is that the basic data which is needed at UK level is
capable of being compiled in a coherent form across the
administrations, in order to ensure that there is a set of UK-wide
numbers, that this allows users to compare and contrast the impact of
policies in different parts of the UK”.
Many expressed concern during
the consultation that it was becoming more and more difficult to obtain
statistical data that covered the whole of the UK. That fragmentation
of statistics makes it more difficult to assess the effects of
devolution. Simon Briscoe, statistics editor of the Financial Times,
put the problem as follows in his evidence to the Treasury
Committee:
“Where
there are policy areas that a devolved assembly has decided to take a
different policy stance, say Scotland from England, I think it is a
shame that we do not have harmonised data so that we can actually see
what the impact of the different policies are. If we cannot see the
results of that little bit of experimentation, then nobody is going to
be any the wiser about which policies were
best.”
An
inability to compare figures across the country on issues as
significant as health, housing and poverty makes it more difficult to
develop coherent evidence-based policies and programmes to tackle them.
As the Treasury Committee pointed out, difficulties in producing
consistent UK-wide statistics could also jeopardise the UK’s
ability to meet its international obligations on statistics. The Royal
Statistical Society described the problem as “serious and
worsening”.
The evidence
seems to suggest that the problem did not start with devolution but may
have been intensified or brought into sharper focus by that process.
Particular
concern has been expressed by the Statistics User Forum, which described
the lack of coherent UK-wide statistics as “a long-standing problem that is
not improving. It is a major source of frustration for professional
users and confusion for non-professional
users.”
The
forum’s chairman, Mr. Keith Dugmore, pointed out to
the Treasury Committee that locations about which it is difficult to
obtain data might lose out on inward investment as companies opt for
areas where they can easily get hold of the information that they want.
He expressed the user community’s frustration when he
said:
“There
are people out there who are the actual customers and users of
statistics saying, ‘Why on earth can I not grab the same thing
for Northern Ireland as I can for Devon and Cornwall or
wherever?’”
He
pointed out that the compilation of different indices of deprivation in
different areas of the country meant that one could not, for example,
determine whether poverty was more serious in Glasgow or in the east
end of London.
Those
anxieties were echoed recently by Dr. Kadhem Jallab, head of Tyne and
Wear Research and Information. In consultation during the run-up to the
Bill, he
said:
“Devolution
obviously risks further disintegration of comparability...The
index of deprivation in England is not directly comparable with that in
Scotland. These effects make the comparison of Tyne and Wear with
Glasgow and Edinburgh
impossible.”
Dr.
Jallab went on to note that work on housing market areas in the
north-east based on migration patterns from the census had been
compromised by the different approaches taken on census statistics in
Scotland and England.
Particular problems arose in
relation to the 2001 census. I refer again to Simon Briscoe’s
evidence to the Treasury Committee. He felt that the ONS had been so
enfeebled by the 2001 process that it had managed to produce only a
limited set of UK-wide figures. For other census data, users had
to
“fumble
around on three different websites to try and cobble together a figure
for the
UK”.
Alison
Macfarlane, professor of perinatal health at City university, told the
Committee how she tried to produce figures for what she described as a
very basic set of maternity indicators. She
said:
“I had
gone round the houses liaising with people in four countries and sent
in data derived from 18 separate data sets. Even then, there were a
number of
holes.”
Professor
Macfarlane called for the ONS to have a much stronger co-ordinating
role.
It seems that
at present there is a political imbalance. The pull from devolved
Administrations to localise the census is stronger than the
counterweight of a few statisticians in London who want a consistent
approach across the country. The chairman of the RSS’s national
statistics working party, John Pullinger, who was heavily involved in
the 2001 census, described how such problems
arose:
“A
census is clearly a very sensitive topic. The Scottish Parliament
decided to make some changes. That was not in itself a problem, but
when the Welsh Assembly saw that the Scottish Parliament had made some
changes, they wanted some changes, and the thing began to fragment
because the forces pulling it
apart were stronger than Pullinger sitting in a room in Whitehall with
his counterparts. They were stronger and we were unable to pull it
together, so in fact we had three different
censuses.” Mr.
Pullinger identified a key problem for this Committee to consider. We
clearly need to produce a common core of statistics across the UK. The
question is how to provide the counterweight to the natural pull away
from the centre. How can we give the board or the National Statistician
the authority to provide it?
I remind the Minister that he
still has a chance to change his mind and vote in favour of amendment
No. 98 to give the National Statistician a formal duty to promote
consistency of statistics across the UK. We have debated it but are yet
to vote on it, and I hope we will have a chance to do so. That would
have provided an important boost to the authority of the National
Statistician.
5.30
pm
Alun
Michael:
I am trying to follow the hon.
Lady’s logic, but she is rattling through the briefing in front
of her. She seems to be talking about a tension between consistency of
national statistics and issues that are of interest in a devolved
system. I would point out that in some circumstances there may be
devolved interest in the regions of England, as well as in Wales or
Scotland. However, does the hon. Lady not realise that information
about use of the Welsh language and such matters gained through the
census is extremely important, not only for the National Assembly for
Wales, but for local authorities in Wales? Does she not accept that
there needs to be, not a tension or conflict between central
consistency and devolved Administrations, but a complementarity of
information that respects the differences within the United Kingdom?
That is part of the way in which we maintain its
unity.
Mrs.
Villiers:
I agree that the ideal is to
have complementary statistics. Nothing that I have said should be taken
to indicate that the devolved Administrations or organisations within
areas that have devolved government should not be producing their own
statistics on certain matters. However, it is important to have a core
of statistics that are compiled in the same way across the United
Kingdom. Otherwise, it will be difficult to compare different local
areas, which will lose out as a result.
Alun
Michael:
The hon. Lady suggests that they should produce
their own statistics, but it would be a complete nonsense when the
census is going on for the sort of information that, for example, the
Welsh Assembly and local government in Wales require not to be
collected as part of that process. It would be a ridiculous waste of
money not to deal with it in the way that Members of this House have
argued: by a simple complementarity of information that is
collected.
Mrs.
Villiers:
I agree that it is important not to have
centralisation across the board. There is no reason that collection
cannot take place in parallel where local statistics are collected
alongside national statistics. However, that does not detract from the
importance of securing at least a series of core indicators with which
one can compare policies and situations in different parts of the United
Kingdom according to the same criteria.
Rob
Marris:
Given the content of clause 18(1), is the hon.
Lady speaking in favour of the clause standing part of the
Bill?
Mrs.
Villiers:
I am using the opportunity to explore concerns
in relation to devolution. I do not anticipate that the Opposition will
choose to vote against clause 18 standing part, but it was important to
air the arguments, because they are of
concern.
Alun
Michael:
Perhaps the hon. Lady can help us by putting her
brief on one side and giving us just the Janet and John version. What
is she asking for?
Mrs.
Villiers:
I am asking for recognition of the importance of
having a core set of statistics that are consistent across the United
Kingdom.
Stewart
Hosie:
I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, and I
have some sympathy. Does she want us to be able to measure accurately,
for example, public spending per head between the various regions of
England and parts of Scotland? Is that the sort of thing that she
wants?
Mrs.
Villiers:
I can see that there would be advantages in
having consistent statistics to give an indication of levels of
spending in different parts of the country.
Stewart
Hosie:
That is interesting, and the hon. Lady is asking
for a uniform set of statistics to measure it. Water in Scotland is in
the public sector, while water in England is in the private sector;
although water supply is fully funded by the taxpayer through the
bills, it is deemed to be public expenditure in England but not in
Scotland. There is a massive disparity in public sector accounts of
spending per head on that basis alone. How does one collect uniform
statistics that give a meaningful comparison given those different
systems?
Mrs.
Villiers:
It will not be possible to collect uniform
statistics on everything throughout the United Kingdom, and it is not
necessary to do so. However, there should be a core of statistics that,
I hope, is consistent across the United
Kingdom.
Alun
Michael:
I must tell the hon. Lady that if Janet and John
were reading the book, they would still be confused about her request.
I have heard nobody suggest that there should not be a core of
statistics enabling comparisons from region to region, country to
country and so on. However, does she suggest that in the interests of
the centralised consistency that she seeks, we should collect
statistics on the speaking of Welsh in north-east England? It might be
interesting, but the resources would not be well devoted to
that.
Mrs.
Villiers:
No, I am not saying that. As I have said on
several occasions, statistics that are relevant to some areas of the
United Kingdom will not be relevant
to others. I do not believe that the issue is controversial for the
parties. The Minister recognises the importance of dealing with the
problem of the fragmentation of statistics. That is why he has worked
hard to bring the devolved Administrations into the new
framework.
I hope that
the Bill will help to remedy the problems to which I have adverted. I
look forward to the Minister’s reassurance that the Bill will
tackle fragmentation to ensure that we can compare poverty levels in
Glasgow, in Tyne and Wear and in the east end of London, for example.
That is an important function of our statistical services, and that is
why it is important that the Bill reduces fragmentation and ensures
that there is consistency between key statistics throughout the United
Kingdom.
Stewart
Hosie:
I happen to agree with the hon. Lady about the
fragmentation of what I call British statistics, at least in so far as
ensuring their quality, accuracy and completeness, which is uniformly
first class throughout all statistics produced by the nations, the
provinces and the UK as a whole. It is also correct that there must be
UK data, not least to fulfil international obligations. However, there
must not and there cannot be uniformity for the sake of it. Should a
devolved Administration require statistics in a form that they define,
it would be a matter for them alone, so long as the statistics,
official or national, fulfilled all other criteria set by the board,
particularly on quality, completeness and on-time delivery.
The hon. Lady suggested that a
devolved Administration may restrict or stop the calculation of a
statistic that shows them in a poor light. However, given the absence
of accurate data, particularly economic data, not only in the UK,
England and parts of England, but in Scotland, it is far more likely
that the Administration would seek to commission the information that
they required. The information that they may not consent to is
information or statistics that they presumably do not consider
necessary to set policy priorities, to measure the success or failure
of policies and so on.
We know from
previous sittings that the Treasury controls the appointment to and
size of the board, and that the Treasury can restrict the
board’s direction in the case of failure, which we will come to.
The Treasury can also restrict the disclosure of information to and
from the board, particularly if the devolved Administrations request or
demand it. The clause is a useful safeguard to ensure that
Administrations cannot have foisted upon them information that they
consider to be of no value. However, the provision relates only to
fully devolved statistics. State-wide statistics, which the hon. Lady
wants for the purposes of comparison, will of course be provided
because they are UK statistics.
I am not sure what we heard
from the hon. Lady, but the clause offers a degree of protection
against Administrations becoming burdened with statistics for which
they have little or no use. Other clauses allow them to direct the
production of statistics that they need. The hon. Lady’s fears
are unfounded. Given the Treasury’s command and control of other
parts of the process, which we have discussed, I would have thought
that she would have been delighted to see that at least one part of the
process is fully in the control of the Assembly in Wales, the
Parliament in Scotland and the Administration in Northern
Ireland.
Mr.
Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab): With regard to
the Scottish Parliament, if the board were to produce statistics that
showed taxpayers south of the border that the Barnett formula was
favourable to those north of the border, would the hon. Gentleman want
to expose that to
scrutiny?
Stewart
Hosie:
I am not sure why any politician would not like
scrutiny of the facts. I would be delighted for a statistic to show
what we already know, which is that the Barnett squeeze is reducing the
amount of money per head in Scotland, year on
year.
The
Chairman:
Order. Stick to the Bill,
please.
Stewart
Hosie:
I am being admonished, but I was teased into it by
the hon. Gentleman. [
Interruption.] Well, it was such an
easy target.
The
clause is to be welcomed, because it allows the devolved
Administrations at least a little control, if only in stopping
unnecessary demands for unnecessary statistics and freeing up more time
for the statisticians, the board and others to provide new information
that is needed.
John
Healey:
The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet used the
opportunity given by the discussion of the clause to register a few
concerns about the nature of devolved statistics and comparability
across the United Kingdom, and she was right to do so. We share her
concerns, which was clear from the consultation and the way in which we
framed the Bill. The decision of the devolved Administrations to
participate fully in the provisions of the Bill goes some way to
addressing those concerns.
Under the devolution
settlement, devolved Administrations have responsibility for devolved
matters such as education, health and local economic development. That
includes the production of statistics relating to those matters, such
as statistics on pupil numbers, cancer operations and local planning
applications. Devolved statistical production predates by some way the
devolution settlement and Simon Briscoe’s comments in the
Financial Times. Wales, Northern Ireland and particularly
Scotland have different legal, political and education systems, which
leads to the production of relevant statistics. That has meant that
direct comparability in those areas has been difficult for some
time.
Given the
devolution settlement and our determination not to open it up wider
with this Bill, it is right that the Board should obtain the consent of
the relevant devolved Administrations to produce statistics on devolved
matters. The clause allows the board to produce and publish statistics
on any UK matter. It is important that the board should continue to do
so, not least because we are concerned to aid the coherence of UK
statistics, as the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet is. The Office for
National Statistics compendium “Social Trends”
covers both devolved and non-devolved statistics to give a
definitive overview of the United Kingdom. Where it impinges on
devolved statistics, it is right that consent is obtained from the
Administrations.
The hon. Lady cited some of the
technical and practical difficulties that analysts and researchers had
in bringing together statistics from devolved sources. Those concerns
were raised during the consultation, and we are as keen as she is to
deal with that issue. She urged me to confirm, as I think I already
have, that I believe that the Bill will be helpful because the devolved
Administrations have decided to participate fully. That means that the
board will have a responsibility in its remit to monitor and report on
statistics in the devolved
Administrations.
5.45
pm
As I have said,
the Government are committed to working with the devolved
Administrations to review what is already in place as non-legislative
agreements, including the formal concordat to try to improve the degree
of consistency and coherence. I hope that this brief debate has been
useful to the hon. Lady and that she will agree to the clause standing
part of the
Bill.
Question put
and agreed
to.
Clause 18
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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