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The issue that I wish to bring back to the House this evening is whether the monitoring and scrutiny of the Statistics Board’s reports by the UK Parliament should be for another place alone or whether there should be, more advantageously as I would contend, a Joint Committee of both Houses to discharge that function. Noble Lords who took part in debates on the Bill will recollect that at various stages of the Bill’s progress that issue was discussed. As the Bill reached us, it was strongly argued in many parts of the House that the Bill did not properly implement the Government’s aim of restoring trust. This is not the occasion to
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That was an admirable example of the revising function of this House. A principal reason for that success was that a number of noble Lords—and I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Moser, in his place this evening—have a long experience and great expertise in the subject matter of the Bill and they deployed that to great effect in our debates.
The argument for a Joint Select Committee of both Houses has actually been acknowledged by Ministers. On 16 January this year, the Minister in charge of the Bill in another place, John Healey, who was then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“I see some merit in the proposal for a Joint Committee of the two Houses, although it is not a matter for me as a Minister. It would enable both Houses’ expertise and interest in such matters to be played in, and it would allow their breadth and depth of expertise to play a part in the strong and proper scrutiny of the system”.
I could not have put it better myself.
Nevertheless the honourable Member rejected the idea because,
- “it would not assist in achieving the overall objectives of the Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, Statistics and Registration Service Bill Committee, 16/01/07; cols. 67-69.]
I found that a very difficult argument to understand.
Perhaps I should say a brief word about Joint Committees. Although most committees of Parliament are set up by the two Houses separately and their roles and purposes can differ markedly, Joint Committees have a long history. That excellent book How Parliament Works, by Rogers and Walters, points out that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments goes back many years. More recently, there have been rather more Joint Committees. For example, there were the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which reported in 1999, and the Joint Committee on Conventions, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling, which reported in November last year. It is common ground that both those committees earned high praise for the clarity and wisdom that they brought to their respective tasks.
Perhaps a closer analogy of what I am arguing for is the Joint Committee on Human Rights. This is an ongoing committee of both Houses and the experience of that committee’s work has shown that it is valued by both Houses. It is of relevance—I say this in passing—that the then Leader in another place, the right honourable Margaret Beckett, did not announce a Joint Committee on Human Rights until after the Human Rights Bill had received Royal Assent. It is
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One reason for that could be that for some years, statistics have been a Treasury responsibility. A sub-committee of the Treasury Select Committee of another place reported on the subject. However, on 1 April, that responsibility moves from the Treasury across to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury will no longer be in charge. That was one of the substantial amendments which we argued for and passed in this House and which was accepted in another place. Therefore, I think the argument that this should be done by a Treasury committee now disappears. It will have to be another committee. Happily, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who will reply to this debate, represents both the Treasury and the Cabinet Office in this House, so we are very pleased to see him and there will be no change for him.
But fresh in everybody’s minds must be the recent pre-legislative Joint Committees on human tissue and embryos and on climate change. I was very privileged to serve on the former—the Joint Committee on human tissue and embryos—and I was very impressed by the different expertise that the Members from each House brought to the task and how they complemented each other. Their expertise was not the same. There was also a distinct reluctance to become involved in anything of the nature of party politics. At the other end there is some grandstanding from time to time in Select Committees, but that does not happen in a Joint Committee. I argue that those are good examples of a Joint Committee and that such a committee would be entirely appropriate to scrutinise statistics. So my own experience has strengthened my view that the committee that will be set up to scrutinise the work of the Statistics Board should also be a Joint Committee of both Houses.
I wish to refer to two other matters only. The chairman of the Statistics Commission which hands over to the board on 1 April, Professor David Rhind, sent a statement to me yesterday and I have his permission to read it. He said:
“The Statistics Commission believes that the success of the new statutory arrangements will depend in no small measure on close scrutiny by a suitable Parliamentary committee. And whilst we recognise that the form of scrutiny is a matter for Parliament itself, any new committee will need to be able to draw on a wide spectrum of relevant knowledge in order to fully engage with a field as all-embracing as official statistics”.
I think that is something that we can claim to have in this House.
I mention one other point, on which I end. I can tell the House that after discussions with my noble friends here and in another place, my honourable friend George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, has agreed to throw his weight, and that of his colleagues, behind the proposal for a Joint Committee. Why cannot Ministers do the same?
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6.22 pm
Lord Moser: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, for initiating this short debate. The subject—the future role of Parliament in the reformed system of government statistics—is of enormous importance and I agree with the chairman of the Statistics Commission just quoted that the success of the reforms depends considerably on the role of Parliament.
As we have been reminded, your Lordships spent many productive hours earlier this year considering and improving the Bill. It is worth reminding ourselves of a little of the background. It all began with the idea from the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, to find ways to improve public trust in government statistics—an aim crucial to all parts of government. The Chancellor’s aim received widespread support, not least in the statistical community, and was welcomed throughout the debates in this House, although we then had much to improve in the Bill. As a result we now have an Act which has every chance of achieving a better understood, used and trusted statistical system.
As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, reminded us, at the centre of the reforms is the new Statistics Board. We and the Government are extremely lucky that Sir Michael Scholar agreed to be chairman of the new board. He is a very distinguished public servant and has very wide experience relevant to the tasks of the board. He is now president of St John’s College in Oxford, equally successfully. That augurs well, as do the rumours that there is a strong field of applicants to serve on the board. The chances are that the whole thing will be in good and strong authoritative hands under Sir Michael Scholar.
So far, so good, but what about the board’s powers? They are extremely limited, which is where Parliament comes in. It has been clear from the beginning that Parliament will have a crucial role in the new structure. I quote from the Treasury document of November 2006 called Independence for Statistics:The Government Response:
“The Government expects Parliament to play the central role in holding the statistical system to account ... and expects that there will be full accountability to Parliament for the statistical system”.
Later, in response to the House of Commons Treasury Sub-Committee, it is said that,
It cannot be clearer. What kind of role are we talking about? Of course, it is much more than putting questions to Ministers or laying reports before Parliament. It would be easy to conclude that the board would have to lay an annual report to Parliament, but we are talking about something much deeper. I shall try to illustrate it.
The board will deal with tricky policy and statistical issues going right across government and public concern. Take migration, on which there are many doubts about the statistics. Take crime—ditto. Pensions are very complicated. Population movement, health, transport, education and skills and so forth—those are the sort of issues on which government statistics, although professionally sound, get into a lot of trouble as
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The reports and public discussions that will emanate from the board should not just be submitted to the relevant department—say, health statistics to the Department of Health—in the hope that it will do something about them. Much more is required. Those reports, which may be critical and sensitive, should come to some mechanism in Parliament from the board for authoritative final conclusions. Parliament is the final stage in the reformed system. That seems totally obvious.
I come finally to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, which seems absolutely right. What is the mechanism in Parliament that can deal with such sensitive issues? That mechanism—a Joint Committee—should have several characteristics. First, its expertise, knowledge and interests should go well beyond economic matters. The Treasury Sub-Committee is therefore not the relevant committee, even though the Treasury will remain important for economic matters. Even if it remains interested in statistics, we are dealing with a whole range of policy issues; social, environmental, economic and so on. The committee would be very wide-ranging.
Secondly, the committee will not deal only with simple administrative or even financial issues. It will deal with very tricky and often technical issues to do with statistics. Therefore, it will need all the expertise in those fields to deal in depth with such issues; otherwise it will fail the role of the new board.
Thirdly, and following from that, it seems obvious that it would be a mistake for such a committee to be limited to the other place. It is obvious from all that we have seen in the past 12 months as the reforms have made their way through the two Houses that there is a great deal of expertise and interest in this House. It seems to me self-evident not only that there should be a very authoritative Select Committee but that it should be of both Houses.
Moreover, although I speak as a statistician, I do not think that this is a tricky issue, even politically. Such a committee could help the Government and Opposition; it could certainly help the new Minister, Mr Miliband, who now has the residual responsibility for statistics. It will be crucial in giving genuine power to the new board. I think I can speak for the statistical community in saying that it will also be crucial for the whole reforms to make sense for statisticians and how they serve the Government and society. I strongly support the argument for a Joint Committee in this area.
6.32 pm
Lord Newby: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for introducing the debate. There is almost a tradition in Parliament whereby we spend huge amounts of time discussing an issue and we feel very strongly about it and then the lighthouse beam of our attention goes to something else and we forget what we were worried about six months ago. We forget what we said during proceedings on a Bill and
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It is worth reminding ourselves of the evidence that we had when the Statistics and Registration Service Bill was going through the House. We heard that only a small minority of the population believes any statistics issued by the Government. Therefore, public trust in public policy is reduced. The Bill created a new framework about which we had many doubts as it went through the House. Although we amended it, a number of those doubts remained even as the Bill was passed.
Therefore, it is important for those broad reasons that parliamentary scrutiny of the work of the Statistics Board is adequate and effective. As the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said, this is not one of those cases where Parliament is going to look just at a dry annual report, although it will need to look at the annual report of the Statistics Board for some of the reasons that we spent some time in debates on the Bill worrying about. For example, is the role of the chairman, vis-Ã -vis the National Statistician, working out in the way that we hoped that it might, but feared it might not? Are the resources adequate for the job in hand? Are the priorities right? Are there any other constraints in terms of ministerial activity and involvement that in some way reduce the effectiveness of the board? Those are the mechanical matters that flow from the annual report but which are crucial if the board is to do its job properly.
The other role which a Joint Committee and Parliament have to play, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Moser, referred, relates to the way in which the board, the Government and Parliament look at statistics in relation to sensitive public policy areas. The noble Lord, Lord Moser, mentioned migration, population, health and crime as examples where the way in which statistics are produced and reported matters terrifically in terms of public perceptions of the issue. An example from the newspapers yesterday was regarding the production by the Office for National Statistics of some population figures. The headline in the Guardian stated:
That is a pretty alarming figure. The headline could equally have said, “Forecasters say UK population may grow to 63m by 2081”, because the Office for National Statistics said there was a range of possibilities and, needless to say, the newspapers took the most alarmist figure. That is not unusual, but in issues such as this—crime is another—where figures produced in good faith by the Office for National Statistics or a department can be used in an alarmist way, it is important that there is another body that can analyse the figures and ensure that there is a counterpoint to the way that the newspapers report them. Parliament is that body, because it will be able
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How is this best done? The straightforward way would have been to carry on with a House of Commons committee. A sub-committee of the Treasury Select Committee will not do any more. It would make no logical sense, given that the Treasury has no ongoing responsibility for statistics. It would send out completely the wrong message, given the lengths to which we went to ensure that the Treasury was no longer in charge, if somehow responsibility reverted to the Treasury Select Committee. I know from colleagues on the committee that being on the Treasury Select Committee is an onerous job. It is a very political committee and is wholly unsuited to the role we are talking about.
The two main arguments for having a Joint Committee have already been expressed extremely well. First, in your Lordships’ House there is obviously tremendous expertise in this area which may rest in a number of individuals, of whom the noble Lord, Lord Moser, is one. Given the composition of your Lordships’ House and the fact that we tend to have people coming in with experience of the public services, academia and other disciplines relevant to statistics, we are likely to have for a longer period expertise in this area that can be brought to bear on this issue.
The other relevant feature of your Lordships’ House has to do with attitude and the way that committees deal with issues. As I said, the Treasury Select Committee is very political. Committees in your Lordships’ House tend to be less political. I am sure that in our parliamentary scrutiny of statistics we try to shine a light in a non-partisan way on issues as they arise. I think that your Lordships’ House would help very much in that respect.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said that his Treasury spokesman in the Commons supported the idea of a Joint Committee. The Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in another place—indeed, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats—is also supportive of a Joint Committee of both Houses on this issue. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to agree that it is a very splendid idea.
6.40 pm
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, as is inevitable on a Thursday evening in the middle of winter, we are a rather select band who have gathered here this evening to debate a very important topic. First, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to this group of anoraks on statistics, who gather together from time to time. I am of course indebted to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding for his continuing interest in how our arrangements for statistics will work in practice and, in particular, how the parliamentary scrutiny arrangements will work.
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My noble friend has been unwavering in his conviction that the new Statistics Board should be overseen by a Joint Committee of both Houses. As we have heard, he received the support of all Benches in this House during the passage of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill and, as we have also heard, he had the support of both my honourable and right honourable friends in another place and also that of the Liberal Democrats, both declarations of support having been more recently affirmed and strengthened.
It is important to know what the Government’s position is and we are looking forward to hearing what the Minister says later. As we heard from my noble friend Lord Jenkin, when Mr John Healey was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, he seemed to be rather encouraging about the idea of a Joint Committee but then said that he was unconvinced. More recently, we have heard a slightly harder line emanating from his successor, so it will be very interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about the Government’s position.
When the Statistics and Registration Service Bill was debated last year, there was general support for the creation of the Statistics Board. We certainly had our differences on the detailed application of the policy and, as other noble Lords have said this evening, we were pleased that during its passage in your Lordships’ House we improved the Bill considerably.
What united us when we approached that Bill was a concern, verging on despair, about the state of public trust in statistics. A MORI survey about two years ago found that only 34 per cent thought that government figures were accurate and 59 per cent thought that the Government used figures dishonestly. Reform of the system, including an independent statistics board with a wide remit across government statistics, was acknowledged by all as a very important step towards rebuilding public trust.
Of course, public trust cannot be restored overnight. We certainly hope that the Statistics Board will have some quick wins and that it will establish itself very early as genuinely independent and determined to raise standards among the statistical community. But there will be a long process, starting with a code of conduct, going through the assessment process and then on towards the stage when the Statistics Board will be able to call in for assessment statistics which have not been designated as national statistics.
We have to see parliamentary scrutiny as a part of the framework for restoring confidence—the Statistics Board cannot be expected to do it all by itself. The roles that a parliamentary committee needs to undertake are of two kinds. First, the committee must oversee the Statistics Board itself. There are many important issues that have not yet been satisfactorily resolved. I do not, for example, think that anyone regards the relocation of the bulk of the activities of the ONS to Newport as a complete success. Some changes may yet be needed. There needs to be a forum in which difficulties can be aired, even if those difficulties and their airing are not to the taste of the Treasury.
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