Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My hon. Friend makes the point that he often makes about his view of actuaries. I can give him that general assurance, and nor will the board’s six non-executive members all be statisticians. It is important that we have the strongest possible board and the widest range of user interests, in order to constitute the governance and authority that this independent body requires from Ministers. Furthermore, my hon. Friend may be interested to know that the board will be established as a non-ministerial department and that it will have a majority of non-executive members and a non-executive chair, who will be appointed by the Queen. We will ensure that its members are appointed in open competition, in line with guidance from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. As I was saying, we want the non-executive membership to bring to the board a broad range of skills and backgrounds—in business, academia and public service—in order fully to represent the range of interests of users of official statistics. That will be crucial in ensuring the board’s credibility, its ability to hold the national statistician properly to account for the running of the executive office, and its ability to discharge its wider responsibilities for the quality and integrity of statistics. There, are, however, some criticisms of the approach that we are taking, so let me try to deal with them. First, some say—indeed, one or two Members have raised this issue this afternoon—that the scope of the system of board assessment and approval should apply to all Government statistics, not just to national statistics. A second argument that has commonly been made is that the board and not Ministers should have responsibility for submitting additional statistics for assessment and approval as new national statistics. I have looked very carefully at both the cases that have been made, and let me try to explain to the House why we have drawn the conclusions captured in the Bill. On scope, first, the nature of statistics, how they are published, the sources of data used, the officials responsible and the methods of production are all widening and changing rapidly. In Government, we no longer just use the traditional collection methods of surveys and census: important statistics are increasingly derived from administrative and management systems. We no longer see statistics as a semi-academic discipline, with statisticians working in the isolation that implies. Increasingly, statisticians contribute with other analysts as key members of multi-skilled, multi-disciplinary teams. We also no longer expect professional statisticians to produce only formal series of statistics. Increasingly they offer expert advice on many other issues and other Government products with a statistical component. The old definitions of what is and what is not a statistic are becoming blurred. In a modern statistics system, in which we have determined that decentralised production and the flexibility to respond to user needs are real strengths, what is most important and practical is not that the board, and its independent audit function, covers all Government-produced statistics, but that it covers all the statistics that are most relevant to policy formulation, delivery and accountability and, of course, those statistics that are most valuable to business, academics and a wide range of other users. I trust that the House will accept that statistics produced and published by the Government differ in importance. Few would contest the importance of unemployment statistics for a wide range of purposes and users. Others may regard the results of the television export survey, carried out by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, or the egg bulletin as less important. Still fewer would argue that regularly published data on departmental stationery consumption should be treated in the same way or with the same status as the jobless figures.