Statistics and Registration Service Bill

That is helpful, and perhaps the hon. Lady will be able to help me further. My understanding of StatsCan—as we Canadians like to call Statistics Canada—is that it comes under the Treasury board. It might not, but the chief statistician of StatsCan has been prayed in aid repeatedly during the passage of the Bill, and I wonder what they do there. In regard to ministerial interference, the real question is one of perception. I do not accept the proposition that there is ministerial interference in our statistics, if that is what the Opposition are suggesting. That seems to be the implication of what they are saying, although they have not said it directly. I will not accept that unless they can produce firm evidence of it. The architecture of the Bill is indeed about beefing up the new board, and rolling the ONS into it under the executive committee—or whatever it is called—in the new set-up. Having that board and its committee within the Cabinet Office would do nothing more, or less, to alter perceptions of ministerial interference, such as there might be. At best, the proposals relating to the Cabinet Office represent a break-even proposition—in which case, why change anything? At worst, they would be destabilising, in that they would take away something from the Treasury that it has dealt with for a long time. As I said earlier, if the board is inside the Treasury, it is more likely to get adequate funding than it would if it were in the Cabinet Office. That is not a slight on the Cabinet Office; it is the Treasury that has the cheque book. We want the board to be adequately funded, and when I intervened on my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary earlier, he assured me that it would be. I believe that there will be adequate funding, and it is just as likely—if not more likely—to come from the Treasury than would be the case if we were to shift the whole thing over to the Cabinet Office. I would vote against the amendments if they were pressed to a Division.