Statistics and Registration Service Bill

Statistics have many purposes, one of the most crucial of which is informing decision making in government, in local government—I know that that is a matter of importance to the right hon. Gentleman—and in business. Statistics allow international organisations to assess the performance of the UK economy. Official statistics have a range of vital functions. Let me turn to the objective of our amendments. There is considerable confusion in the statistical community about the way in which the Bill allocates functions and responsibilities to different entities, especially regarding the allocation of functions between the board and the National Statistician. In short, it is not easy to say exactly who will do what and who will be accountable to whom. When I asked the Financial Secretary to give the Public Bill Committee an example of a similar institutional structure that was in operation in the UK or internationally, he was not able to provide one and said that there were no direct comparators. He effectively acknowledged to the Committee that the proposal in the Bill represents more or less uncharted territory. On Second Reading, the Minister was asked a question about the person to whom queries about the way in which the census deals with matters relating to the Sikh community should be addressed under the new structure. He said that such a technical query relating to methodology would be dealt with by the National Statistician at present, and that that would be unlikely to change under the proposed structure. However, the Bill expressly provides for the board to have a role in considering that type of methodological question. It is true that the Government have tried to provide for a separation of the functions of the board by creating a new statutory head of assessment. They claim that that will mean that production and scrutiny functions will be kept separate during day-to-day operations. However, such a separation is inconsistent with clause 29(1), which makes the National Statistician the chief executive of the board. That measure leads one to expect that she will have an executive remit on all the board’s activities, whether they are assessment or production. We have tabled amendments to address that situation. The problem of the blurring of the functions of the board and the National Statistician is exacerbated by clause 29(4), which gives the board the right to substitute its decision for that of the National Statistician. I believe that that problem is highlighted by Lib Dem amendments Nos. 46 and 47. The Government’s attempt to provide for an internal split of responsibilities is insufficient to deal with the concerns expressed by many during the consultation about the conflict of interest to which the structure proposed in the Bill will give rise. As the North East Regional Information Partnership has pointed out, the board ““will not be detached””. In short, the board will be judge and jury in its own case. The problem is best illustrated by considering what would happen if a complaint about a decision were made by a member of the public. At present, someone making a complaint about a decision made by the ONS can go to the Statistics Commission, if the ONS refuses to respond to his concern. Under the new structure proposed in the Bill, a complainant will take his concerns to the board. However, the board would have been responsible for making the decision about which the complaint had been made. In a real sense, the board would have been the entity that made the decision, given that the Bill merges the ONS into the board. The board would thus be asked in such a situation to rule on whether its own decision was correct. The chairman of the board could regularly find himself in the embarrassing position of having to issue a rebuke or correction to himself. If the board decided that the approach was correct, a complainant could well feel that the failure to impose a sanction resulted from not an impartial assessment of the correctness of the approach taken, but the board’s desire not to admit fault in its statistical production. No doubt the statistical production kitemark is being produced with the board’s imprimatur. The Royal Statistical Society has pointed out that it is difficult to envisage how the board will be able to command public confidence in its impartiality in such a situation. The practical problems with such arrangements have been debated at length in the House in the context of the BBC. Many people, including the Burns panel, have stated that arrangements whereby the BBC regulates its own output are unsustainable. The conflict that we are discussing is even more stark than the conflict in the case of the BBC, as the BBC’s regulatory function is confined to its own output, whereas the board’s remit is wider. It would be difficult for the Statistics Commission to hold the statistical system to account as effectively as it has done if it had responsibility for running the Office for National Statistics, too. The concern was expressed repeatedly during the consultation. To take just two examples, Jill Tuffnell, head of research for Cambridgeshire county council, said on behalf of the Central and Local Government Information Partnership that a much clearer divide was needed between scrutiny and operational functions. The statistics users forum stated that it did not believe that it was good governance, or conducive to restoring or maintaining public trust in the system, for the same body to be responsible for the delivery of statistics and for ensuring quality and adherence to standards. It said that the proposed removal of the Statistics Commission would eliminate a check on the system and replace it with a system that at least appears to be weaker. We hope that the Government will listen to the concerns of the experts who use official statistics every day, and we can see small signs of movement in Government amendment No. 48. In Committee, the Government had the embarrassment of having to vote down an amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) about the purpose of the board. The amendment said that the board should seek to ensure that the statistical system served the public good. I was surprised that the Government sought to vote down an amendment of that sort, but they have tried to remedy the problem in amendment No. 48. However, although that amendment may give us more of a clue about the objectives of the board, it does nothing to deal with the structural problems that I outlined.