Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR MICHAEL
FALLON MP, MR
SIMON BRISCOE
AND MS
JILL LEYLAND
10 JULY 2008
Q40 Mr Liddell-Grainger: What would
you suggest?
Mr Briscoe: It is difficult. The
first thing they will need is a list of all the departments which
are involved, which essentially exists. I am not sure whether
the Authority will agree with that list or feel it is complete
but you have a list of departments. Although I said earlier that
there was no planning, different departments make different statements
at different periods of time about what their outputs are and
what they are planning to do, so I think it is a matter of collecting
all of that information, seeing what state it is all in, how comparable
it is, and take it from there. I do not know the answer but I
do not think the initial steps are terribly difficult.
Q41 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Statistically,
that is going to be a bit of a mess, is it not?
Mr Briscoe: It is a tough job,
yes.
Mr Fallon: And it is for you,
Mr Liddell-Grainger, to police it. I would hope that that first
report would be the basis of your scrutiny sessions with the Statistics
Authority. It is certainly what we tried to do with the ONS's
annual report.
Q42 Mr Liddell-Grainger: One of the
basics—and I think this has been brought out—is to
try and understand statistics and what they are for, yet we have
devolved parliaments looking at it, and it is quite obvious when
you look at some of the things that are looked at, a lot of them
are England and Wales or England and Northern Ireland. There is
no real gathering of statistical information for the UK in certain
levels. Could we do better on that? Should we do better on that?
Ms Leyland: Yes, definitely we
should do better. It is a longstanding problem. Clearly, you have
issues where there are different educational and legal systems,
as in Scotland, and the statistics have to reflect that, so that
limits it, but there are many areas where statistics could be
produced in a much more comprehensive manner. I am sure that is
something the UK Statistics Authority will have in mind and will
try to bring about, but obviously it cannot do it on its own,
it needs the co-operation of the devolved administrations and
the co-operation of departments where they produce the statistics
as well. Of course, within that you have to respect the autonomy
of the devolved administrations still. We should be able to do
better at something which the Statistics Authority I am sure will
be looking at and I am sure they will be reporting to you on their
progress or where they have problems and have not been able to
make progress.
Q43 Mr Liddell-Grainger: An example
would be obesity, which is a UK national thing, it is not just
Scotland, and Wales and Northern Ireland, it is something we would
like to know the statistics of as statisticians, the press and
Parliament, therefore. Do you think we, as a Select Committee,
should be pushing much harder, not to standardise it, well maybe
we should perhaps standardise it, but to say that we should be
publishing the Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish and the English
statistics as one block every year. For example, if you bring
this to us and then we put it out, would that be a way forward?
Simon, what are your thoughts?
Mr Briscoe: I think we should.
It does not seem terribly difficult to me. Jill has already mentioned
there are some areas of administrative data where I think it is
very difficult to mesh it all together, but the very first step
should be to make it much harder for new differences between the
four areas to arise. At the moment we are on a path where there
is greater break-up of the system occurring, so the first step
should be to stop that. Where that can be reversed through mutual
agreements, I think it should be done. From the point of view
of Scotland where the independence among statistics has got its
freest spirit, I think, I sense there might be a change going
on. When they first got their devolution it was almost a point
of principle that they wanted to have some differentiation, but
I think now there are growing voices who realise that if policy
is going to be a bit different in Scotland or if Scotland is going
to be benchmarked against something else, mainly England or Wales,
then it is useful to have comparable data. It is in the interest
of Members in Westminster Parliament and in Edinburgh to have
data which is comparable.
Q44 Mr Liddell-Grainger: The next
paragraph literally is, "Lay any report it produces before
at least one Parliament ... ", so presumably if you did not
want statistics being laid in front of the Scots who, "Won't
tell the English and won't tell the Welsh", that statement
seems a bit odd, do you not think?
Ms Leyland: Is that in the Act?
Q45 Mr Liddell-Grainger: It is actually
the duties of the Statistics Board from their own document. I
am just wondering, is that not a little odd?
Ms Leyland: I thought the Act
said that the Board had to lay reports before all. I have not
seen that.
Mr Liddell-Grainger: I am so sorry, I
will read it to you: "Lay any report it produces before at
least one of Parliament and the delegated legislatures and publish
that report". Basically what it is saying is it can lay it
before one of the Parliaments. I find that a little odd.
Chairman: We can feed that in, but these
are issues we can well explore with the Statistics Authority itself.
Q46 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I do ask
the question because, as a Select Committee, we want to try and
get a playing field that we can work off and I know Michael and
his Treasury Select Committee have done a lot of work on this,
but we are trying to discover the best way of taking this forward,
given it is now in the gentle hands of Karen Dunnell. Is not one
of the things we should be looking at is trying to get this sort
of playing field?
Mr Briscoe: The positive news
is the Statistics Authority has announced that it will be setting
up an office in Edinburgh, it will have a number of staff there,
it is going to try and build close relationships with the statisticians
and the MSPs. I think ultimately that is the way forward, it is
just to persuade people that these statistics are a vital bit
of public infrastructure, just as important as a health service
or an education service, and it is in everybody's benefit to have
more and better and comparable statistics.
Q47 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Following
on from that, two paragraphs down, it is what happens if there
is a problem. In it it says that it is up to the Cabinet Office
Minister or direction from the Scottish or Welsh Ministers, the
Department for Finance or Personnel for Northern Ireland to remedy
any serious failures. Let us say there is a serious failure within
the system, it is going to be up to the local area to resolve
the failure, not Newport or anyone else. Again, does that not
leave potential problems should there be a failure within the
system?
Mr Briscoe: Of course, but at
least it will be in the public domain going forward. What has
happened in the past is there have been stitch-ups behind the
scenes with officials at a high level or low level and we have
known nothing about it until after the event when it is too late,
At least the new arrangement gives an element of transparency
to it.
Mr Fallon: It would be reported
to your Committee, and if it was relatively serious, for example
on the arrangements for the census or whatever, it would be a
matter that your Committee, again, might want to take evidence
on and have a good look at.
Mr Liddell-Grainger: I am not sure Scotland
would. One would like to think that Julie and Paul would pick
up if there was a Welsh problem, but we do not have a Scottish
MP. Unless it is in The Scotsman and it is then public
and we know, it is quite likely we would not know, unless it was
brought by a minister or somebody to say, "Actually there's
a Scottish problem". Would we know? There is no obligation
to say we should be told.
Chairman: We shall find out.
Mr Liddell-Grainger: I suppose I am just
nitpicking, but it is going to be interesting to see when it comes
out.
Q48 Mr Prentice: Can I ask if there
are areas where the statistics have become seriously degraded?
You mentioned earlier we have got a robust system, but where has
that gone wrong, if it has gone wrong anywhere?
Mr Briscoe: I do not know about
"gone wrong", there are some areas where it has never
been right.
Q49 Mr Prentice: For example?
Mr Briscoe: In the room next door
evidence is being taken about the Darzi Report on the NHS. I find
it extraordinary that we are spending £100 billion a year
on a service and we know so very little about what is going on.
That report focused on outcomes. If I could read a sentence from
it, it promised a whole new set of information for people. It
said: "The information will be on every aspect of high quality
care, on safety, such as cleanliness and infection rates, on experiences,
such as satisfaction, dignity and respect and on measures of outcomes."
"Making data on how well we are doing widely available to
staff, patients and the public will help us understand variation
and best practice and focus on improvement". That is fine,
but what we have had in the health department is a bit of a scandal
in the recent past. The Government came in in 1997 with one of
its principle commitments being waiting lists and it is only now
we are really getting proper waiting list figures covering the
time from the GP to getting your treatment, before we only had
in-patient statistics. I simply say, all this information sounds
very impressive but is this going to be delivered by the same
department that has taken ten years to get us some waiting list
figures which was relatively pretty simple?
Q50 Mr Prentice: Are you telling
us that in the past the NHS organisations were fiddling the figures
or massaging the figures?
Mr Briscoe: I am not sure they
are fiddling, it is just a complete mystery to me. I do not know
to what extent responsibility lies within the NHS or the Department
of Health or the Information Centre, this sort of detached quango
body, which incidentally has a leading statistician as its head
who disappears under rather mysterious circumstances. I do not
quite know where responsibility lies and where the accountability
is for that and quite what we, as individuals or Members of Parliament,
should be expecting as decent information from the health service.
Mr Fallon: As well as health statistics,
the second thing that keeps coming back are crime statistics,
where you seem to have figures from the Home Office, the police
forces and then the British Crime Survey, and I do think it is
unsurprising that the public do not seem to agree that crime is
falling in quite the way that successive governments have said
it is falling, and the third is immigration and emigration, which
we have already talked about, and quite clearly, the authorities
have lost control of how many people are actually here at any
one given moment. I think those are probably the three worst areas.
Ms Leyland: I think it comes back
down to the fact that there is not proper planning for statistics
and, in a sense, with the statistics, people produce what they
have done for many years and do not realise that things have moved
on, as with migration statistics, or they come out of administrative
sources. It is not so much that people are deliberately trying
to make the figures bad, but more it is more a sin of omission.
Q51 Mr Prentice: I asked the DBERR[1]
whether the statistics had been degraded because over the years
I have had companies in my constituency come to see me exasperated
by the huge number of questions the Department of Industry, now
BERR, of course, were asking them to furnish on their business.
I wonder what kind of response rate the statistics people got
and whether anyone was ever fined for not furnishing statistics
that they were duty-bound to hand over.
Ms Leyland: Obviously there is
always a trade off because if you collect statistics, somebody
has got to fill the form in. That has always been a bit of a balancing
act. You would have to ask the Office for National Statistics
how many people they have taken to court for doing that type of
thing.
Q52 Mr Prentice: Are there statistics
out there that are not national statistics which should be national
statistics in future and what are they?
Mr Briscoe: Can I say on the response
rate, there is a fundamental problem across all surveys of business
or individual or family household surveys of response rates declining.
I think that is a very good example where, as a Committee, you
might want to ask Government departments what they are doing to
try and resolve that. There are academics and specialist groups
who are trying to deal with that problem outside Government, and
I think trying to bring together all of that information and see
what can be done would be quite valuable.
Q53 Mr Prentice: Yes, but no-one
here knows how many people have been fined for not furnishing
the information. I ask that question because you can be fined
£1,000 for not filling in an electoral registration form
but no-one, I do not think, has ever been fined.
Mr Briscoe: Exactly. The front
page of the last census form also threatened to fine you if you
did not fill it in, and I think it was fewer than a 100, it certainly
was not many, and yet the failure of a million-plus people not
to fill it in is arguably "the century's biggest act of civil
disobedience" as some people have called it.
Q54 Mr Prentice: Absolutely. Going
back to my question on national statistics, what should be national
statistics but are not and why should they be?
Ms Leyland: It is a very good
question because at the moment it is often very difficult to find
out what are the national statistics and what are not.
Q55 Mr Prentice: You should know,
surely.
Ms Leyland: I would love to know.
It is very hard to find out, but somebody has got to put that
information there. On the hospital waiting lists, it is my understanding
that while quarterly data are national statistics, monthly data
are not. According to the Ministry of Justice website, which I
looked at yesterday, the prison population is not a national statistic,
which seems to be quite an important one, and I would also say
that house price index is not a national statistic, so there are
some examples. We do know also that the number of statistics which
departments under the previous regime put forward for national
statistic status varied quite a lot from department to department.
One of my colleagues from the Society of Business Economists did
an analysis on this.
Q56 Mr Prentice: It sounds very incoherent.
Ms Leyland: It is.
Mr Briscoe: It is worse in a sense
because my understanding is under the new system it is the Government
departments and the ministers who will be nominating data to become
national statistics, which seems to be back to front. Your Committee
and others have done studies in recent years of Government targets
and the data used to measure them and I think the broad consensus
is that roughly only a third of Government targets are monitored
by national statistics, which seems to me to be far too low. It
might well be that going forward the targets which do have statistics
to monitor them should almost automatically become national statistics
whether a Government department wants that or not.
Q57 Mr Prentice: There is nothing
to stop the National Statistics Authority telling this Committee
in their view what should be national statistics and I am sure
as night follows day that they will.
Mr Fallon: This is one of the
big questions and probably will become one of the more important
parts of your work because the new Statistics Authority will be
the badging authority, if you like, to roam across this area and
say, "Why have we got this set of statistics? Is it fully
compliant with the Code of Practice and should it not be designated
as national statistics so that everybody can have more confidence
in it?" What you will find as that work programme continues
is ministers perhaps refusing to bring forward a line of statistics
for badging as national statistics because they are not confident
about the basis of those statistics or whatever, and arguments
developing between the Statistics Authority and the different
departments as to what can properly be labelled as "national
statistics" and what should not be. What will happen as the
number of national statistics sets slowly increases is eventually
departments will want to get their key statistics labelled as
"national statistics" because the others will be seen
as second-class statistics. These arguments and tensions will
develop between the Statistics Authority and the department on
the classification and I think your Committee will play a key
role in that because where a minister refuses to have a line of
statistics designated as national statistics, you will want to
know why.
Q58 Mr Prentice: I am sure we will.
Are there any statistics or data lurking out there that are not
being captured in statistical form because they are just too hot
to handle? You talked about the passports question in the census.
There are sensitive areas there which are central to the development
of public policy but could be seen as maybe encouraging Islamophobia
or whatever.
Mr Briscoe: I think immigration
and emigration is a very good example. It is roughly a decade
since the number of in-migrants started rising to become a significant
number. You would have thought that a statistical service would
have got together by now to measure that properly, but all we
have, a decade on, is a working party of the relevant departments
to discuss what they are going to do going forward. I think if
we had had the current arrangements a decade ago, that would not
have been allowed to pass. Where you have got that vacuum, that
lack of information and lack of facts, it allows all sorts of
prejudice to breed, so that is a very good example. I am extremely
happy to give you some others. One area that really helps to set
public opinions would be on prison populations. Everybody knows,
or thinks they know, that Britain has one of the highest prison
populations in Europe according to the number of prisoners in
proportion to the population and, indeed, we do. But, in fact,
if you calculate the number of people we have in prison against
the number of crimes recorded in the country we are below the
European average. If people thought in this country that we were
imprisoning a small proportion in comparison with other countries,
our views about prison building and lengths of sentencing might
be rather different from what they are now. The Home Office refuses
to calculate and publish those figures; they have been asked to
do so. There are areas like that where the whole public impression
about areas of public policy which are key are influenced by the
unwillingness of an authority to publish numbers.
Q59 Mr Prentice: I know, because
I read it somewhere, that 11% of the prison population are Muslims,
but we do not routinely ask questions about religion, do we? This
is a huge area of social policy. Should we be asking questions
about religion?
Ms Leyland: Where it is appropriate
obviously. There are always going to be areas which are sensitive
and where you have to tread with care.
1 Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory
Reform Back
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