Statistics and Registration Service Bill

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss the Bill. There is common ground throughout the House that there is a need to do more to improve confidence in Government statistics. I do not think that anyone particularly feels that statisticians are in any way corrupt, misleading, dishonest or incompetent, but we sense that there is widespread concern and scepticism among the public. Several Members have cited the ONS study showing that only 17 per cent. of people believe that official statistics are produced without political interference. That has to be put in the context of broader concern about the use of statistics. The same survey showed that 59 per cent. of people perceive that the Government use statistics dishonestly. I have been a member of the Treasury Committee for about a year and I have noticed that once the experts, such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, get their hands on a Government announcement after a Budget or a pre-Budget report, the statistics that we have been given are not necessarily what they appear to be. There is evidence of double counting, reannouncements and so on. That is a broader and more significant cause of scepticism about statistics, rather than the fundamental structure of Government statistics. That is not to say that the Bill cannot help. Its intention to restore confidence by giving greater independence to the statisticians is admirable. Sometimes, politicians too easily cry for independence; a theme of the next premiership may be the granting of greater independence to all sorts of institutions. However, we have to balance independence with accountability and sometimes that does not happen. Clearly, if ever there were an area in which independence was appropriate, statistics would be it, so we must apply a test to the Bill: does it give the independence that it should? In many cases, the answer is that it simply does not. I shall give an example that has not been particularly dwelt on during the debate. There are to be six non-executive members and three executive members of the statistics board. The Government will appoint all six non-executive members. One will be appointed by the Crown—we know that that effectively means the Government, although we do not know whether the appointment will be made on the advice of the Prime Minister or the Chancellor—and the five others will be appointed by the Treasury. As for the three executive members, one, the national statistician, will be appointed by the Crown. Nothing in the Bill addresses the role of Parliament. That theme has been touched on by many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead). The Bill misses an opportunity. We do not have to follow the National Audit Office model as far as statistics are concerned, although it clearly has support on both sides of the House. Even if we opt for the Government’s preferred model, Parliament could have a role of greater involvement, especially on appointments. There is a process whereby members of the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England attend hearings in front of the Treasury Committee. The Committee is examining that process again in the next few months, and without prejudging that review, I think that there is room for improvement and that the process could be beefed up. None the less, there is at least a process whereby members of the monetary policy committee appear before a cross-party group of parliamentarians and are reviewed. The Bill does not allow such a process to occur, which is regrettable. More generally, Parliament should have greater involvement in determining, reviewing and consenting to Crown appointments. I hope that both parties will examine that to a much greater extent in future. This is a missed opportunity, because we want to give individual members of the board greater authority and for there to be not just independence, but the perception of independence. I do not think that the appointment process does anything to achieve that. Greater independence might be granted to members of the board by considering the question whether they should serve one term. At present, such people will be eligible for unlimited reappointments. In such circumstances, there would always be a tendency for people to say, ““Well, I don’t want to upset the Treasury, so I will keep my nose clean,”” and that may impose a pressure. There might be merely a perception of a pressure, but there would be a pressure none the less. I turn to the code and its application to official statistics as opposed to national statistics. Ministers will remain responsible for all statistics produced by the Departments other than those designated as national statistics. Who decides whether a statistic is a national one? The Ministers themselves will do so; they will decide whether to make an application to receive that kitemark. That is regrettable and I hope that that aspect of the Bill will be re-examined in Committee. The statistics board ought to have the right to say, ““These statistics are so important and significant that they should fall within the scope of national statistics and the code should apply fully to them.”” I do not understand how the code will apply, if it will do so at all, to those statistics that are merely official statistics and not national ones. That is a great failing of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) made the point that as a result of that, the Bill’s impact will bear down most heavily on statistics produced at present by the Office for National Statistics, as opposed to departmental statistics. The Financial Secretary, who is sadly not in the Chamber, said in response that if one considered the matter numerically, the majority of national statistics were produced by Departments. However, I checked the record of the evidence that he gave to the Treasury Committee back in June, when he argued that one of the reasons why the residual Department should be the Treasury was that the majority of national statistics were economic, especially those produced by the ONS, and said:"““The importance of those statistics and the frequency of them generally are higher than other departments.””" My point in response to the Financial Secretary is that it is the statistics produced by the ONS that will be affected most by the code, although, as Lord Moser has pointed out, they are probably the aspect of statistics that is least in need of reform and support. I mentioned the Treasury’s residual authority. The Treasury Committee concluded that it was right that the Treasury should retain that position, but the decision was clearly finely balanced. The Financial Secretary’s argument to the Committee was that many statistics were economic matters—that is clearly right—and thus Treasury-related, but that clearly cuts both ways. Is it right that the Treasury, which is the Department that is most under scrutiny as a consequence of national statistics, is also the Department with residual powers? One could argue that those residual powers are pretty minimal, but they include appointing the board. We thus find ourselves in an unfortunate position. It is the Treasury that is most prone to the tendentious presentation of statistics. At the time of the last pre-Budget report, claims were made of extra billions going into schools for capital and extra amounts per pupil, per year. When the claims were examined by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, they turned out not to be anything like those that the Treasury made. That is not an isolated example. If we were to consider the period during which the culture of spin most got hold of the Government, we could look at the time when public spending projections were triple counted and the Chancellor was able to make great claims about the billions of pounds that would be spent on public services by rolling up the figures for various years. The Chancellor stopped doing that to an extent during a time at which public spending was rising rapidly, but now that that is coming to an end, he seems to be using the same approach again. It is unfortunate that a Department that has acquired a reputation for spin in recent years will retain its control. Many, including Lord Moser, have argued that the obvious Department to have control of this is the Cabinet Office, and I have a lot of sympathy with that view. However, there is a great deal of speculation about what will happen to the Treasury following the change of Prime Minister later in the year, with talk of it being split into two and the creation of a beefed-up Cabinet Office. Perhaps the fact that the Government are continuing to pursue the line that the Treasury should be the main Department for statistics suggests that no such thing will happen and that the Treasury will remain intact—maybe I am reading too much into this. However, I have no doubt that if the policy changes while the Bill is being considered in Committee, something could be read into such a change of approach. On pre-release, I must say that I did not envy the Financial Secretary having to try to justify the policy, even given the announcements that he made today about restricting pre-release to 40 hours. I asked how many of the 79 respondents to the consultation process welcomed the Government’s proposals on pre-release, and I did not get an answer, other than, ““Well, everyone seems to recognise that the proposals need to be tightened up.”” However, they have not been tightened up nearly enough. If we list those who have considered the issue—the Treasury Committee, the Statistics Commission, the independent Phillis review of Government communications, the Royal Statistical Society, Lord Moser and, I am sure, others—we can see that all of them are concerned about the policy on pre-release, but none of them, as far as I can tell, is satisfied that the Government’s proposals go nearly far enough in dealing with the issue. The Government give two arguments on why pre-release on the scale proposed is so important. The first is that it makes it easier to deal with the media. Of course it does, but that in itself does not justify the provision; in fact, it is perhaps an argument for why we should not allow pre-release on the scale proposed, as it is very easy to pick out the nuggets of good news and get them into the papers before anyone has the chance to digest the more complex statistics. The second argument is that Ministers need to be able to announce policy decisions immediately after the release of the data. During the Financial Secretary’s speech, I asked a question; I do not know whether the Economic Secretary can answer it. Can he give one example of a case in which the Government made a policy announcement as a consequence of having pre-release access to statistics?