Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. The Bill establishes an independent statistics system in the UK that will help to deliver the Government’s principal objectives of a high-quality and high-integrity system; clearly defined roles, responsibilities and accountabilities; and greater transparency, flexibility and value for money, as well as important independence from Ministers and a more central role for Parliament. There is no doubt that statistics matter. As well as informing us all about our economic, political, social and environmental worlds, they are crucial in a modern democracy to the judgments that people make about the promises that Governments make and their ability to keep them. In a rapidly changing economy and society, statistics matter more and more to a wider and wider range of users. The UK statistics system already has great strengths, and its technical and professional capability is recognised as world class. The modern world places demands on our statistics system and, alongside developing consistent quality, we must improve public confidence in official statistics. The new statistics system set out in the Bill will help us to achieve both. It can evolve in the light of new, shifting statistical demands and experience, and it is the next step in the Chancellor’s reform of the machinery of economic governance, which began in 1997 with the statutory independence of the Bank of England, followed by independence for the Competition Commission and the Financial Services Authority. Each reform, like the reform in the Bill, set out in legislation independent, credible institutions with a clear remit from Government or Parliament, with decisions taken at arms-length and full reporting with maximum transparency. The quality and coherence of statistics across the UK will be improved, and we welcome the full participation of all the devolved Administrations in the new approach. We have retained as the basis for the Bill the framework for national statistics—perhaps the most radical reform of statistics for 30 years—that we introduced in 2000. We have retained, too, the long-established, well-supported decentralised system of UK statistics, whose considerable strengths were widely acknowledged by respondents to our consultations, by the Treasury Committee and by the Statistics Commission. We want to use the opportunity offered by the Bill to make the Office for National Statistics—the single largest producer of national statistics—independent of Ministers. We believe that independence for the ONS and independent scrutiny and oversight of the statistical system as a whole are most effectively delivered by a single institution—hence the central importance of the independent statistics board in our arrangements. The board will have the core objective of promoting and safeguarding the quality, and comprehensiveness of official statistics as well as good practice. Following our proceedings on Report, it will do so in the wider public interest. We need the non-executive membership of the board to bring a wide range of skills, backgrounds and expertise to its work from business, academia, public service and other fields. The members of the board will be crucial to the credibility of the board and its ability to hold the National Statistician properly to account for the running of the executive office and, where necessary, to challenge Government Departments and Ministers on the quality and integrity of the statistics for which they are responsible. Crucially, the board will no longer be answerable to Ministers. It will answer directly to Parliament. Parliament will therefore play a central role in the future of our statistics system and will play an important role in holding the system to account. It will also set arrangements whereby the accountability function will operate. Ultimately, it is for Parliament to decide the arrangements that it wishes to have in place and the relationship that it wishes to strike with the board. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House takes an active interest in that, and is considering the comments that have been made throughout the proceedings on the Bill. The Bill’s provisions, importantly, set out a way of enhancing data sharing in a way that has been widely welcomed by those in the statistics field. Stronger sharing of administrative data can improve the quality of statistical data and analysis, and our ability to make policy and judge its impact, and it can reduce the burden on those responsible for completing the surveys on which many of our statistics depend. The Bill provides, therefore, for the increased sharing of personal data between the board and other parts of Government where that sharing is for the sole purpose of statistical production and analysis. Of course, it is vital that the confidentiality of such data is properly protected, so we are taking the opportunity in the Bill to increase the safeguards and sanctions on the disclosure of personal data, including a tough criminal sanction for its unlawful disclosure. We are using the Bill as an opportunity finally to establish proper employment status and rights for registrars in England and Wales. This is a matter on which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) has campaigned tirelessly in his years in the House. The Bill will make the 1,700 registration officers employees of local government and give them access for the first time to the rights and protections that are already available to others. It will ensure that registration officers retain their current terms and conditions on transfer to local authority employment. This has been a thorough and productive scrutiny process. I hope hon. Members who have given so much to the work of scrutiny have found it as constructive and useful as I have. I thank in particular the hon. Members who led from the Opposition Front Benches—the hon. Members for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers), for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy). I thank also the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie). I hope Members will agree that, even though we may not have reached a meeting of minds on some of the detail, there is much more on which we agree in principle. I welcome the support that has been given for a number of particular proposals in the Bill. Whatever our remaining differences, I hope all Members will agree that there is no doubt that the Bill leaves the House in better shape than when it started. That is the proper role of Parliament, and Members have played a full part in its scrutiny and improvement. I commend the Bill to the House.