Statistics and Registration Service Bill

As at each stage of consideration of the Bill, we have had a very well informed, informative and useful discussion—in this case, of a group of two new clauses and a series of amendments. Before dealing specifically with the new clauses and amendments tabled by the Opposition, I would like to speak to Government amendment No. 48, which has been tabled for consideration in the light of the debates and strong case made in Committee in support of similar amendments—tabled then by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon). The provisions are also a response to the points raised in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris). I appreciated the three cheers that my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth gave for the amendment. He is right that it is important and I hope that he is also right that it is non-controversial. I also welcome the support of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks and others who have spoken in the debate. The new provisions in amendment No. 48 strengthen the board’s overarching objective, requiring it to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. Although I am not seeking to define exhaustively the many ways in which official statistics serve the public good—a point that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks was anxious to hear me make—clause 7 highlights some of the key ways in which official statistics do so. They help inform the public about the economy and society in which they live; they play a crucial role in the development and evaluation of public policy at all levels—national, regional or local— and they are official statistics, the statistics of the Government. The amendment is designed to include clearly in the board’s statutory objectives an important point of principle, which was always the Government’s intention, though perhaps not explicitly stated—that the availability of comprehensive, high-quality official statistics produced according to good practice is not an end in itself, but that statistics exist to serve the public good in the widest sense. Official statistical information is a rich and vital source of information in any modern democracy. It serves everyone from school children, local community groups and business to academics, the voluntary sector, researchers in a wide range of organisations and, of course, the Government themselves. The amendment is an explicit reflection of the Government’s belief that official statistics exist for the public’s benefit, and not solely to inform and assist the Government in their work. By including the revised objective, the board will be required to give recognition and consideration to the ways in which statistics serve the public good in carrying out the functions for which it is responsible, such as monitoring and reporting on quality, comprehensiveness and good practice, as well as drawing up and assessing statistics against the code of practice. I hope that Members will agree that the amendment strengthens the Bill and that it represents a welcome step forward. I shall now turn to the new clauses and amendments tabled by other hon. Members. In many ways, they illustrate an attempt to alter the core model of governance that we have adopted in the Bill. They cover matters that we discussed in detail in Committee, and touched on at some length on Second Reading as well. However, it is worth retreading some of that ground on Report, and trying to elaborate on the issues in a way that I hope will enable us to deal with some of the concerns behind the amendments and new clauses. To summarise, our model for setting up the statistics board and its relationship with the National Statistician and the executive statistics office involves the creation of the new independent statistics board that is at the centre of the Bill. That reflects our commitment to two central principles. The first is to devolve, where appropriate, ministerial power in statute to credible institutions set up independently and given a remit by Parliament and the Government. The second principle involves leadership by a board, which means sharing accountability across a group of individuals with a range of skills and expertise who report directly to Parliament rather than to me as the Minister. It is our belief that that is a better approach than vesting all authority in one individual. It is consistent with best practice in corporate governance, be that in the private or the public sector. It also reflects the importance of statistics in terms of involving more than simply a matter of technical excellence in production. It is therefore important that a board of broader composition reflects the wider range of users and the purposes of statistics. From the point at which we first started collecting import and export data more than 400 years ago, and from when we conducted the first population census about 200 years ago, the decentralised system of statistical collection and production has been viewed as a strength of the UK system. Given the unique features of our long-established and strongly supported decentralised system of statistical production, we wanted to establish a single oversight board to set standards, to scrutinise the statistical system, and to provide the top layer of governance for what is at present the Office for National Statistics but which, in the context of the Bill, will be the independent national statistical service. A key reason for doing that was to avoid creating what might otherwise be competing independent centres of statistical expertise, which might ultimately confuse and undermine confidence in the system. Under our chosen model, the board will be able to draw on the professional advice of the independent statutory National Statistician, rather than requiring its own separate independent professional adviser, which clearly would be the case were we to set up two separate centres or institutions. I would point out to the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) that we are creating a model that is best suited to the purposes of the UK statistics system for the future, but we are not entering entirely uncharted territory. At the core of the new system lies a familiar model—the unitary corporation or board responsible for discharging the functions conferred specifically by the Bill. Normally, a board delegates functions to its executive arm. In this case, however, the executive authority is conferred directly to the executive office. That is not unusual: officers of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs can exercise the functions of HMRC commissioners. What is unusual is the requirement for the board to have regard to the National Statistician’s advice. That requirement recognises the National Statistician’s professional status. Moreover, the board must set out in a report to be laid before the House any instances of when it departs from the technical and professional expertise and advice offered by the National Statistician. In many ways, the model and approach being adopted in the Bill will be familiar to those who understand the role played in Government Departments by accounting officers. Effectively, the Bill removes Ministers from the accountability structure for the ONS—in all the hours of debate on the proposals, I have not yet heard anyone argue that I should keep my current job in that regard—but the oversight role is absolutely fundamental. That is why the new statutory board will undertake the role currently performed by Ministers.