Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I was about to say that the point about a political system is the extent to which other views may be expressed, in terms of the gloss put on figures and what emerges from the process overall. The issue is not so much a lack of trust in statistics, but the lack of trust in our public system generally. Indeed, we could make a statistical correlation between the reduction in trust in the veracity of statistics and the reduction of trust in public servants and in communities. We live in an age in which trust in a variety of institutions, and one of those is the statistics on which other institutions have to take decisions and reflect the veracity or otherwise of those decisions back to the public, has decreased. The problem is compounded by the fact that we get what look like statistics, but are not, about the statistics of perception in response to the very trust issues we started with. We get statistics saying that x per cent. of the public think that statistics have no validity. Those statistics of perception tend to reflect how people stand in relation to the information that they receive about the veracity of statistics and opinions. A small example is that only 7 per cent. of people actually travel on railways, but in every survey about the perception of whether the railways are improving or getting worse, a far higher percentage give their opinion. They are reflecting back to the inquirer the generality of view about that issue, rather than their own grounded experience. It is not true that the public’s support for statistics has suddenly fallen. It is a longer term process. The general distrust of many areas of public service, public statistics and public activity is one of the features of our age. As has been said, we are subject to headlines that reflect back to the public the low level of trust. The famous quote is that there are"““lies, damned lies and statistics””." Indeed, on a statistical count of the citations of that quotation in the Chamber today it is believed to be 100 per cent. true that the author was Benjamin Disraeli, but that exemplar of stealing other people’s clothes nicked it from Mark Twain and used it to good effect. The opposite view was put, almost at the same time, by Florence Nightingale, who said:"““To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.””" When we consider the issue of trust more generally, we might aim more towards Florence Nightingale and away from Mark Twain. Indeed, the aim of the Bill is to restore trust. People will continue to express concerns about statistics, but the Bill introduces a form of presenting statistics to the public that is likely not only to be trustable but will show over time that statistics are impartial, real, and reliable. I recall the corrosive effect on the ability to trust any information whatever about unemployment after the 23 changes in calculating the statistics made in the latter stages of the last Conservative Government. I am certainly not saying that such distrust is a sudden occurrence, or a change from the past, but it is important that there be reliability over time in an area of previous low trust in terms of the perception of statistics and their use in the presentation of public policy. The Bill takes us considerably further down the road of changes made after 1997 to introduce on a non-statutory basis far greater independence of the statistical service. It makes the changes statutory, and provides for an independent commission to oversee them, and guarantees for the veracity of statistics. I want to consider the question of how the commission will relate back to Parliament. The Bill contains a number of ways for Parliament to scrutinise the independent collection of statistics, which are welcome. My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary invited us to consider the effect of the changes on parliamentary scrutiny, and how such scrutiny might best be advanced. He and other Members said that that was not something for the Bill, but that perhaps the Leader of the House might consider it. However, I draw the attention of the House to what could be a useful parallel from earlier legislation: the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. One of the centrepieces of that measure was the setting up of the Electoral Commission. The chief commissioner was a Crown appointment and the commission was an arm’s-length, non-ministerial body with a separate source of funding, charged to oversee a disputed part of public life that needed that degree of reliability and veracity to inform the process and enhance trust in it. There are a number of parallels with what transpired at that time. As you will recall, Madam Deputy Speaker, section 2 of the Act set up a Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. It continues to function, not as something that owns the commission, or as something that is in the pay of the Executive or the Opposition, but as a body in Parliament, holding to account and bringing accountability to an institution that is not in Parliament. The establishment of the Committee largely resolved the issue of how the process of questioning, debating and making reports through Parliament should take place. As Members know, each cycle of parliamentary questions includes a period—admittedly only a short one—when we can put questions to the Member who represents the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. Furthermore, the House of Commons Commission, over the past few years, has developed the practice not only of placing a report before Parliament each year, but also of initiating a debate on the report on a guaranteed basis. Through the device of a Speaker’s Committee on the statistics commission, we could bring about an arm’s-length relationship that allowed the commission to be accountable to Parliament without being owned by Parliament, which could resolve a number of the questions that remain about a Bill that in most other aspects provides important ways forward to ensure the veracity of statistics and their role in public life. I commend the Bill. I have not yet heard any voices seriously raised against its intentions, but we need to get it right so that the House can make sure not only that an account is given but that the process itself is held to account. That is important, and can be achieved by processes of which the House already has experience, and which it may be able to replicate to the benefit of the Bill.