Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I agree with a lot of what the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said about what the objectives should be, but despite what he said in answer to my intervention, I am still not clear why the Treasury is better able to perform this role than the Cabinet Office. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) are very similar to those that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) and I tabled in Committee; however, I understand that they are a fall-back mechanism, and that her preferred configuration has not been pursued. As my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham said in Committee, the point behind our amendments is not Treasury-bashing. We have always made it clear that the Treasury has taken some very important decisions that have signalled a willingness to give independence to important institutions such as the Bank of England. Indeed, perhaps that is what is disappointing about this provision. The Treasury was willing to send the clear signal that there would be full independence for the Bank, and a similar approach to national statistics—giving this residual power to the Cabinet Office, which is one step away from the Treasury—would be an effective way of underlining the fact that the Bill takes important steps toward creating a more independent statistics system. Although there is a degree of ministerial control over appointments to the Monetary Policy Committee, we have not seen cronyism or the making of political appointments. We welcome that of course, but it does mean that the structure is such that that will continue to be so. For that reason, it would be better to include in the Bill a clear statement of independence, if possible, and to shut down any possibility of an organisation’s saying that the opportunity exists to erode such independence. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham also previously pointed out that there is a potential conflict of interest. If the Treasury takes on its new role as the guardian of statistics, we should remember that it is also a massive consumer of statistics. The Cabinet Office already takes on many roles in the overview of government, and it has the potential to resolve conflicts of interest. Such conflicts of interest would be less obvious if the Cabinet Office were given this power. Reference has been made to the need for a positive attitude in the collecting of evidence-based information. I do not see why any other Department would be able to perform that function less ably than the Treasury. What I am saying is that all these points have been made on Second Reading and in Committee. At this stage, there is no strong argument against having the board based in the Treasury, but, having said that, I am not convinced by the argument that it should stay just within the Treasury. Just because the Department is a massive consumer of statistics, it does not necessarily qualify it as the guardian of them. On that basis, if, ultimately, the National Statistician is appointed by the Crown, it makes sense logically for accountability for that power to go back to the Prime Minister. That would be more rational and symmetrical. I thus have considerable sympathy for the amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet.