Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I should like to make two points. First, as I have said to the hon. Lady, the scope of the Bill is not narrow but includes all official statistics. The statistics board will have a duty in statute to assess, comment on and report to this House on quality, good practice and coverage in respect of all official statistics. Secondly, the hon. Lady may like to know that this afternoon I placed in the House of Commons Library the updated list of national statistics, which totals nearly 1,300 statistics. Surely what is most important and practical is not that the board’s audit function, about which I think that the hon. Lady was talking, should cover all Government-produced statistics, but that it should cover the most important Government statistics. That is precisely what the national statistics system is designed to achieve.