Statistics and Registration Service Bill

Yes, certainly. My amendments reflect my particular concerns about clause 29, which makes the National Statistician chief executive of the board. The clause makes explicit her executive role in relation to the board’s activities, and I think that that is the issue of greater concern. That is why I tabled an amendment to address that point, but did not go as far as tabling an amendment to take the National Statistician off the board altogether. I shall now turn to the second of the three points to which I referred at the start of my remarks. It relates to new clause 3(1)(b) and (c), and the Liberal Democrats’ amendment No. 39. The Opposition believe that it is crucial that the National Statistician is given the explicit remit of co-ordinating the Government’s statistical system. The plea for co-ordination has been made strongly by a number of groups, including the Royal Statistical Society and the statistics users forum. The decentralised system has a number of important strengths, but it comes with in-built disadvantages, too. In cases in which critically important statistics are produced by different Departments, there is a self-evident risk of inconsistency, duplication and inefficiency. In the 1990s, for example, I am told that it took an enormous effort to get the neighbourhood statistics project off the ground because it pulled in data from so many Government sources. The new clause provides a strong co-ordinating role for the National Statistician, which would help to minimise inefficiency and duplication. It would provide momentum and political drive for co-ordinated projects such as neighbourhood statistics, and it could provide critical direction and coherence for the diverse work of the Government’s statistical systems. We believe that that co-ordinating role should extend to the promotion of the consistency of statistics across the UK. Concern about the fragmentation of data has been expressed by many organisations, including the Society of Business Economists. The problem did not start with devolution, but devolution has certainly heightened concerns about the inconsistency of statistical data across the UK. There is an increasing pull from devolved assemblies to fragment statistics, but there is an insufficient counter-balancing pull from the centre to promote consistency, which led to serious problems in the 2001 census, according to John Pullinger, who was heavily involved in that census and is now chief of the Royal Statistical Society national statistics working party. According to the statistics editor of the Financial Times, Simon Briscoe, the census left the Office for National Statistics enfeebled by the pressure to fragment data across the UK. The RSS told the Treasury Select Committee that the problem was serious and worsening. It should be a matter of concern to the House that academics such as Dr. Kadhem Jallab of Tyne and Wear Research and Information have pointed out that differences in the index of deprivation have made it impossible to compare levels of poverty in Newcastle and Glasgow. Alison Macfarlane, professor of perinatal health at City university, told the Treasury Committee that she had to source information from 18 different data sets to compile what she described as a very basic set of maternity indicators. May I make it clear that the Opposition do not seek to impose a one-size-fits-all model on the UK? Of course, the devolved areas will wish to produce statistics tailored to their particular needs. Different regions and local areas may well wish to do the same, but if statistics are collected and compiled on similar topics, consistency should be encouraged wherever possible. If wise and informed decisions are to be made on the impact of health, education, housing and social deprivation on the whole of the UK, we need a core of statistical indicators common to the entire country so that we have empirical evidence on which to base those decisions.