Statistics and Registration Service Bill

The problem is that some PFI liabilities are classified on balance sheet and some are not. Indeed, some do not seem to be classified altogether—special purpose vehicles are not properly classified in private accounts, let alone in public accounts. The public need to know how it is properly decided which liabilities are classified on public balance sheet and which are not, because the totality of PFI liabilities is, of course, very much greater than it was. The treatment of Network Rail was so tortuous that we had a special inquiry into it. We discovered that the Auditor General was defining the classification of Network Rail in a different way from the national statistician—one of them said that it was public, while the other said that it was private—and we worked hard on an all-party basis to try to resolve the difference. It is clearly nonsense to argue that an organisation such as Network Rail, which the Government stand behind, somehow has nothing to do with the Secretary of State. That is the kind of issue that the new independent statistics board should be able to settle for once and for all, rather than leaving it on the current shifting basis, which involves questions about who appoints the non-executive directors and waiting to see the degree of management control exercised by the Secretary of State. I welcome the new board’s responsibility for making decisions on such issues, which will no longer be left to be disputed between two public officials—the Comptroller and Auditor General and the national statistician—or by a parliamentary Committee. The crux of the Bill concerns the classification of expenditure as between capital and current. I want to take the House back to the curious events that took place in February 2005, when just six weeks before the end of the financial year some £3.4 billion-worth of roads maintenance was suddenly reclassified as investment rather than current expenditure, thus making a significant difference to the outcome of the Chancellor’s rules. It turned out that that had not been dreamed up by the ONS but came out of work involving the Statistics Commission, which said in a report on one of its investigations:"““issues regarding Highways Agency accounting for roads discussed…at a public service data group meeting on the basis of an HMT paper.””" When I asked the Chancellor in the Treasury Committee who had instigated the work that led to that rather convenient revision, he snapped back at me:"““This is entirely a matter for the statistics authorities. They are totally independent in the matter.””" He went on to say that"““the independence of the Office for National Statistics is clear and obvious.””" Perhaps it is not quite so clear and obvious now, given that Ministers have had to come before the House to introduce"““legislation…to create an independent board to enhance confidence in Government statistics.””" Something has clearly changed in the past couple of years, whereby Ministers have accepted that there is a serious problem with the perception of official and Government statistics—and, to their credit, they are going to do something about it. The key test that I apply to the Bill is whether it will help official statistics to be perceived as fully independent of Ministers.