Statistics and Registration Service Bill

The hon. Lady has got the wrong end of the stick. The point about the code and the responsibility of the statistics board is not only that it formulates the code, but assesses the national statistics and their production against that code. Clearly, with such a wide—and widening—range of Government data, it does not make sense to give the same attention or submit to the same process as the jobless figures, or the economic data that constitutes the national accounts, to some of the more minor examples that the hon. Lady, if she considers some of the 1,300 national statistics that I have placed in the Library, will accept should not be accorded the same status or importance.