Treasury and Work and Pensions

After seven hours of patience, I am pleased to be able to participate in the final day of the Queen’s Speech debate. I hope to abide by the principle that ought to apply to both regulation and legislation: less is more. The meat, or should I say the gristle, of this year’s Gracious Speech is the Statistics and Registration Service Bill. As the Treasury Committee, on which I serve, discovered in its investigation of the independence of statistics before the summer break, there are some deep misgivings about the Government’s proposals. Some of those misgivings, although happily not all, are reflected in the Bill that was published last Wednesday. The quality of, and ease of access to, statistics forms the bedrock of administrative oversight and parliamentary scrutiny. When questioned about the structure and powers of an independent board, Lord Moser told our Committee that"““if one needs one word, it is ‘scrutiny’; it is advising the public, advising Parliament.””" We might be forgiven for thinking that the principle of economy, which ought to apply to regulation and legislation, ought not to apply to statistics, because a wealth of material is always to our benefit. However, less can be more when it comes to statistics, too. The Bill does not explicitly address the burdens associated with the collection of and access to statistical information. A study by the British Chambers of Commerce, published earlier this month and entitled ““Red Tape: The Real Story””, tackles exactly that issue. It contains a number of case studies drawn from real business. One of the first studies concerns the impact of Government statistics on business. The real problem is that the proposed Bill is introspective, which is symptomatic of what is happening across the Government. Legislation is proposed without a clear view of the effect that it will have after it has passed through its parliamentary stages and gone into force in the wide world. The Treasury wants to make a splash in the press by overhauling the treatment of statistics, which is all well and good. However, we will no doubt have something to say about the details of the proposals when the Bill is debated in the House. It is clear that irrelevant and inappropriate statistics are as burdensome on business and the economy as a whole as unnecessary legislation and even regulation. Chris Harrod, the chief executive of a sports equipment company, said in the British Chambers of Commerce study:"““as a small businessman I am regularly required to fill out forms by the Office for National Statistics. Many of the forms we are asked to fill out, like the Business Register Survey and the Monthly Enquiry into Production ask for the same information.””" He said that the Government"““should either share data across departments as a matter of course or they should look at including default information. At the moment I spend hours of my time which should be devoted to other areas of my business filling in these forms.””" The sharing of data has in itself become a minefield. Our Committee examined the problem in detail and the Government’s response welcomed our recommendations on the sharing of data and the safeguards that must be in place before that can safely take place. I fear that the complex interactions among the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the need to share administrative data will hamstring the Bill and add to the complexity faced by both the successor to the Office for National Statistics and business. The British Chambers of Commerce annual burdens barometer has identified the cost to business of major regulations approved since 1998 as exceeding £50 billion and climbing well into the stratosphere. Some of us would have been present earlier this year when the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) was good enough to introduce show and tell to the Chamber by unfurling the whole document and offering a line-by-line commentary of it. By happy coincidence, the subject of the first entry on the burdens barometer was the cost of the Data Protection Act, which has exceeded £6 billion since 1998. The hon. Gentleman said that the regulation"““Could be good, or could be bad.””—[Official Report, 24 April 2006; Vol. 445, c. 414.]" By equivocating, I assume that he meant that the intention behind the regulation might have been good, but that its implementation had been less than satisfactory. The operation of the Data Protection Act is the subject of a further British Chambers of Commerce case study, in which another business man says:"““The DPA is a worthwhile piece of legislation but the process of registration is both futile for Government and time consuming for business. I do not see how registration assists government other than the revenue they take in initial notification fees and annual renewal fees.””" We have registration processes that are futile, compliance that is time consuming and, most worryingly of all, regulation being used as a revenue-raising tool, rather than a way of preventing abuses. That is the story of red tape. Such things are the hallmarks of the Chancellor’s marriage to stealthy taxation and unwieldy bureaucracy, which is paid for by the cost of falling productivity and crumbling competitiveness. The opportunity to chart our relentless decline through the medium of newly independent yet sketchy statistics is not much compensation. Disentangling statistics from the Chancellor’s coat tails is only the first step in ensuring that, in his words,"““fiscal decisions are fully transparent and accountable.””—[Official Report, 10 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 1404.]" Independent statistics make fiscal decisions transparent, but they do not matter a jot to a Government who are not willing to see themselves as accountable. Several years ago, the Chancellor called the private finance initiative"““a cynical distortion of public finance””." However, in the past 18 months or so, his own cynical PFI distortions have been unravelled by the ONS: £1.25 billion was added in August 2005; £5 billion was added in February 2006; and £4.95 billion was added in September 2006. Will the newly independent successor to the ONS continue to add piecemeal to the Government’s balance sheet—a billion here, a billion there—or will there be a clean sweep for statistics and the Child Support Agency following this year’s Gracious Speech? The Chancellor’s £5 billion annual raid on pensions has cost pensioners £100 billion. How will the independent board force the Government to confront the looming crisis of their own creation? The Government’s spending on consultants reached £2.4 billion by 2005, over £2 billion more than when Labour came into government. How will the new board force the Chancellor to admit that results must follow investment? How will the independent studies reduce the burdens placed on the most vulnerable in our society? The public sector is expanding and unelected quangos are blossoming while families and businesses alike are simply withering under the tax burden. What teeth will the new board have to deal with those problems? That is what we know without the benefit of truly independent statistics.