Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I join the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) in paying tribute to speakers from both sides of the House in what has been a wide-ranging and informed debate. I shall do my best to do justice to the contributions from hon. Members from across the House. I thank them for the time that they have taken to prepare and contribute; I am sure that they will continue to show an active interest in the stages to come. I am sure that the Committee stage will be long and detailed and that much will be discussed. Given the standard of this debate, I am sure that in Committee there will be many interventions from both sides of the House. It is notable that a number of former Ministers made interesting contributions, including my hon. Friends the Members for City of York (Hugh Bayley), for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), and the hon. Members for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), who, once he got beyond the party politics of debates about PFI and pension liabilities and on to the serious substance of his speech, made an important contribution. I make particular reference to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon). As the hon. Member for Fareham said, he has campaigned for a decade to see the measures introduced in the Bill come to fruition, to ensure that registrars enjoy the employment rights that other people take for granted. People ask what the point of a parliamentary career or a ten-minute Bill is—all those hours of work and effort. In the coming years, the result of all his campaigning work, and the reality of this Bill, will be seen all around the country. We commend him for all his work over the years. I want to address a number of the detailed points, but first let me make a few comments to give some context. As my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary said, the Bill is historic. It is the next stage in what has been a radical programme of reform of the institutions of British economic policy since 1997: the independence of the Bank of England, the new, statutory Financial Services Authority, the Debt Management Office, the code of fiscal stability and the independence of the competition authorities. For each of those reforms, we put in legislation a requirement for clear and unambiguous objectives and a proper division of responsibilities, with case-by-case decisions being taken at arm’s length from Ministers, but having proper ministerial and parliamentary accountability and maximum transparency and scrutiny. The reforms of the statistical system that we put forward today are firmly in that tradition. In 2000 we introduced the framework for national statistics, the most far-reaching reform of the statistical system in over 30 years. The Bill builds on those reforms and on the strengths of the United Kingdom statistical system by retaining our decentralising approach to the collection and provision of statistics, while at the same time enshrining independence in statute. The quality and coherence of statistics throughout the United Kingdom will be further secured with the full participation of all devolved Administrations, which is a very welcome aspect of the Bill. I shall say more about the role of Parliament later. Some have argued, as I believe the hon. Member for Fareham did a moment ago, that rather than adopting our evolutionary approach to independence we should have used the model of the National Audit Office. As my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary made clear, we consider the production of statistics to be an executive function most appropriately located in Government, rather than in Parliament. As we have also made clear, with the exception of Mongolia no country has created a precedent by placing the control of statistics in the hands of Parliament rather than those of the Executive. However, we make plain in the Bill that—through scrutiny of legislation and secondary legislation, but also through the way in which both the Executive and the independent statistical service are held to account—the role of Parliament will be not just important, but substantially enhanced. I shall return to that issue shortly. We will have ample time in which to debate the details of the Bill, but I think we are introducing a system that will meet our ideals and objectives. The Government believe that these reforms will accord with our principles in delivering high-quality, high-integrity statistics involving clearly defined roles and responsibilities, transparency, flexibility and value for money, as well as independence for the decision makers. I am glad to say that the broad objectives of the Bill and the principle of independence for statistics have been strongly welcomed by the House today. I can also say that the Government’s decision to legislate for independence has been widely welcomed outside the House. We have consulted in depth on our detailed proposals, and we have received a very thorough report from the Treasury Committee. I think it fair to say, on the basis of the consultation and today’s debate, that there is no single framework for independent statistics, and no clear consensus on the details of the model that we should adopt. Today we have observed some differences over how we should make a reality of independence, particularly in the context of the separation of the board’s executive and scrutiny roles—an issue raised by the hon. Members for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), for Sevenoaks, for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) and for Worthing, West. Another issue was the scope of the board’s responsibility for official statistics and ministerial nomination of statistics for assessment, which was raised by the hon. Members for Chipping Barnet, for Sevenoaks and for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke). A third was the role of Ministers in pre-release access to data, raised by the hon. Members for Sevenoaks, for Chipping Barnet, for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) and for South-West Hertfordshire. I shall deal with all three issues very briefly. First let me deal with governance. Some have called for the establishment of two separate boards, one responsible for delivery and the other for scrutiny. That would have meant putting the Statistics Commission on a statutory footing, separate from statistical production. We considered the option carefully, but in our view a single institutional structure provides the most effective way of delivering greater independence for the ONS, independent scrutiny, and oversight of the statistical system as a whole, while avoiding the creation of competing centres of expertise. We have introduced a number of measures to ensure a proper separation of production from assessment. That applies not least to the head of assessment, who will be appointed by the non-executive board members while being distinct and separate from the executive members, and will lead the staff work on assessment issues. Decisions on whether to approve something as a national statistic cannot be delegated, but must be made by the full board. We do not believe that the structure replicates the problems cited by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet. I think that the analogy with the BBC is a false one, although I am sure that the Committee will examine the issue in detail. The hon. Member for Braintree feared that the role of the national statistician might be downgraded.