Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that if he talks to anyone on any average high street he will be told whether people believe Government statistics. As he likes empirical evidence, let me turn to more examples. No less a person than Professor Adrian Smith recently concluded in an independent report for the Home Office that crime statistics needed ““a radical overhaul”” and that certain major crime category definitions were ““confusing and misleading””. Moreover, grave concern has been expressed about the decision to keep so many private finance initiative and Network Rail liabilities off the nation’s balance sheet even where it seems clear that the bulk of the risk is being borne by the public, not by the private sector. At the general election, the Opposition made a strong appeal for independence for statistical services. The Shadow Chancellor included that as part of his ““triple lock”” to entrench stability into the economy. We share the view of the Statistics Commission:"““The statistical system should serve the long-term public interest, rather than the interests of the government of the day””." We welcome the Government’s move in our direction and their acknowledgement that the 2000 reforms were inadequate. We also welcome their attempts to ensure that the new structures apply across the UK. The people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have as much right to integrity in statistics as the people of England. However, we regret that it has taken them nearly a decade to provide parliamentary time for this reform, and we believe that the proposals before the House today are still too weak to secure statistics that are genuinely independent of political interference. We shall not vote against the Bill, but we will make the strongest efforts to strengthen it during its passage through Parliament. We want to ensure that the full rigour of the reforms applies to all official statistics, not only to those nominated by Ministers to become national statistics; to ensure a clear split between the people responsible for producing statistics and those who scrutinise them; to strengthen independence from Ministers; and to restrict radically Ministers’ pre-release access to statistics.