Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I have to say that I find the Opposition’s arguments singularly unconvincing and somewhat contradictory. There is talk of the Cabinet Office having some sort of cross-cutting overview role, but the Opposition then leap from that to suggest that somehow the Cabinet is more disinterested in statistics than the Treasury. That seems to be a contradictory position to adopt. I agree that the Cabinet Office has an overview role. In our modern form of government, so, in a sense, does the Treasury, whoever is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but that in itself may be no reason for shifting statistics from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office. At best it is a kind of equality of arms. As to the co-ordinating role of the Treasury and the wider implications of that—though not the specificity in respect of what the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) said; she did not use such words, but spoke in terms of the possibility of control freakery in the Treasury—we saw only last week the not very edifying spectacle of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) running around as shadow Chancellor trying to assert that very role within the Conservative party, saying ““Nobody makes spending promises except me””. That is the co-ordinating role of a Chancellor of the Exchequer—in this case, a shadow Chancellor—in our modern constitution. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet referred to the Cabinet Office as an ““honest broker””. I have been a Member for only six years, but I have sat on five Finance Bill Committees, and I have to say that I find the implication behind that remark—that the Treasury is not honest—rather disturbing. I have not found the Treasury to be dishonest. Although the Cabinet Office might indeed be an honest broker in terms of the hon. Lady’s amendments, I have not found the Treasury to be in any sense a dishonest broker. Perhaps the hon. Lady has some contrary evidence, but she seems to have a rather starry-eyed view of the Cabinet Office. Certainly the Cabinet Office reports to the Prime Minister. The hon. Lady may or may not be aware that it has its own Cabinet Minister—the former Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong), a very senior Member of Parliament. Furthermore, the Prime Minister is also the First Lord of the Treasury, so, according to the hon. Lady’s model, we are back in the Treasury. What is more, the Treasury reports to the Prime Minister, as do all Cabinet Ministers and their ministerial teams. That is the nature of our modern constitution. As to funding, the Financial Secretary said earlier in the debate—he certainly said it either on Second Reading or in Committee—that the new board and the associated machinery operating it will receive five years’ funding to be decided outside the comprehensive spending review. If I were a body whose dealings with the Government were to conducted in a manner similar to that proposed for the board—partly at arm’s length—I would be quite pleased to be within the Treasury because that is the Department with the cheque book. I would consider that I would get a better deal from the Treasury than from other Departments such as the Cabinet Office. That is not to say that the Cabinet Office could not do it, but the Treasury has the money and the Cabinet Office does not. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet acknowledged the five-year funding commitment, to decided outside the comprehensive spending review, but it is worth repeating it because it rather undercuts her argument for moving the board from the remit of the Treasury to that of the Cabinet Office. The hon. Lady’s proposal for the board’s funding to be decided by Parliament, not by the Treasury, is a novel approach to our democracy. It has always been my understanding ever since I was in this place that, yes, funding requests are decided by Parliament, but through estimates and other procedures. They are put down by different Departments, so which Department would propose the new board’s request for resources to Parliament? Under the architecture of the Bill, as I understand it, the board itself would not make such a request for funding to Parliament. The idea of direct funding by Parliament being somehow different if the board and its machinery were in the Cabinet Office rather than in the Treasury therefore completely falls by the wayside. The visible difference to which the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet referred relates to another point that she made in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) about the perception of ministerial interference. Perhaps she will tell us what other countries operate in the manner that she proposes. Another of the proposals put forward by the official Opposition involved a system that operated only in Mongolia, so far as the Government could ascertain. What are they doing in Mongolia?