Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will intervene on me if what I say is incorrect, but he seems to be suggesting that Ministers should not have early sight of data. This was not going to be the subject of my speech, but let me say that I do not know of any European country where Ministers do not have early sight of data. There are good reasons why Ministers would want to see at least some data before publication. Having commissioned data, it would be bizarre if they were unable to have sight of that before anyone else—if only to be able to think, ““My goodness, the policy we were proposing has gone badly wrong.”” If things had been got badly wrong, we would like to think that the Minister concerned would at least want to be able to apologise to the House about that—or if things were a terrific success, to be able to claim credit, or to say something else if the result were somewhere in between those extremes. It would usually be right for Ministers to be able to make some sense of any figures they might have had a sight of before presenting the figures to the House. I do not find that at all bizarre. That has been the practice in our political system not only over decades, but over the many years since statistics were first collected. The most-used phrase about statistics was coined long ago, back in the age of Disraeli, so it is clear that the relationship between politicians and statistics goes back a long time. It would not be fair to suggest that it started in 1997, or even in 1979. We should try to get away from the question of whether Ministers can somehow massage figures in the 40 hours or five days or however long they might have. I do not think that that is the case. I want statistics to inform public policy. That is the key. That is what statistics should be used for. I see that the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) is frowning, but that is what they should be used for. Some years ago, I was a councillor serving on Sheffield city council and I remember feeling completely nonplussed when I saw better financial settlements being secured for areas in the south-east that seemed to me to be extremely wealthy compared with the ward that I represented, which was the sixth most deprived ward in England. I could not understand how any economic indicator could result in some such wards getting more money than the one that I represented in Sheffield. That did not make any sense at all. That brings me back to earlier remarks on how we determine that kind of policy. We have made changes, but it might be asked whether they were fair or based on accurate data, and whether the collation of data was properly conducted. That is what we need to get to the heart of—the proper process. Because there is a perception of interference, politicians want to defend their own constituency interests, which is right and understandable. The accusation is therefore made that, ““You’re only making this change for political reasons, because you’re northerners representing northern Labour seats and you want to take the money away from the south-east because that’s where you think us Tories—or members and supporters of whichever other party—are. You’re doing this for political reasons.”” Therefore, we must have true and proper data, so that not only is the right thing done but it can be demonstrated that the right decision has been made for the right reasons. Yet what have we heard about in the debate? My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made some telling points, even about as simple a question as how we can know who lives where they say they live and how many people live in a particular town. It might be said, ““Well, we’ll count the number of people who live there””, and that sounds easy to do, but it turns out to be very complicated. We cannot possibly think that Ministers try to interfere in how many people live in a particular house on a particular day, but it turns out that even that is a complex question. Therefore, although I, along with all Members present, welcome the Bill and want it to progress, I also want the Government to go further—if not in this Bill, then later—because more can be done to make statistics more accurate and dependable. That should not be done just to remove the perception of political interference; there is more to this point than that. We need to look not only at the guidance for use of statistics or the acceptance of statistics, but also at the national guidance for statisticians and the integrity of statisticians. I cast no aspersions on statisticians in saying that. When I was a civil service research officer, we worked in teams, and I believe that that practice has been developed in the time since I left the civil service. I asked some questions earlier about interdisciplinary teamwork, and it is important that teams work together—that they collect data together in an interdisciplinary way, and properly research what is happening so that we understand what people are doing in their lives and make policy decisions based on what people really do, rather than on a snapshot view on one day when we do a simple head count. That is not enough to know how people are experiencing their lives. Earlier in the debate, a Member talked about understanding deprivation, and he seemed to have already made a judgment about what he thought might be an underlying cause—the breakdown of family life. That judgment seemed to be based on the kind of feeling that we all sometimes have: we feel that crime or family life might be better or worse. Sometimes, however, we have actual data, and sometimes those data are counter-intuitive, so we say the data must be wrong, because they go against our gut-instinct. However, it is not wrong just because it goes against our gut instinct. Such data cannot be a snapshot on one day; they have to extend across a period of time. A proper study of family life would have to extend over at least a decade; indeed, we would have to follow families over decades to see what actually happens to them, and have proper cohort groups. We would need to work across Government Departments, and we would probably have to involve other, non-governmental agencies. The statistician’s work would have to inform at the outset how such a study should be set up, and other researchers, such as economists and social scientists, would have to be involved. We should not examine just a single moment in time at which we thought we knew what was happening. We should not undertake a simple count, saying, ““Last year, x number of marriages broke down, y number of people got married and z number got divorced””, without looking at whether the marriage rate or the divorce rate had gone up over the previous decade. We must examine the whole context to see whether children were thriving in spite of, or because of, divorce, or whether family counselling had an impact on family life. Given that perception is often regarded as reality, the independence of the board and all the other elements in the Bill will go some way toward building trust and might have some impact on public confidence. However, if the statistician’s work is to be meaningful and really to inform public debate on policy, I hope that we will at some stage go further and examine how the statistician can inform policy in a more meaningful way inside Departments. I also hope that the role of the statistics board in examining the standard of the statistician’s work will assist Departments in informing public policy.