Statistics and Registration Service Bill

Yes; some of the strongest comments have come from Australia and Canada, for example. That might merely reflect the personalities concerned, but those countries have similar systems that appear to work well, and the people who have had experience of running them continue to express worries about how the British legislation is couched. That issue has yet to be satisfactorily addressed. For my party, there are four remaining areas of concern about the Bill. The following comments on them will largely parallel what the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) has said. All of those concerns have been discussed this evening, so I do not need to rehearse the arguments in detail, but I shall briefly address each one. The most important relates to the pre-release procedures. The Minister’s response is to say that secondary legislation is on its way and that that is reassuring because it will have greater force than a code of conduct operated by the statistics board. Unfortunately, we have no idea what will be in that secondary legislation. We do not know whether it will be an improvement. It might well be an improvement, in which case all the anxieties that people have expressed will be ill-founded and we can all sleep safely and soundly. However, as we have no idea what will be in the secondary legislation, we are not yet reassured. When we ended our discussion of the matter, the Minister’s parting comments worried me slightly. In response to points made by Liberal Democrat Members and others about British comparative performance, it was noted that other countries also release data on previous days. So far as I can establish, only two other countries do that, and that is restricted to overnight release and hedged around with great restrictions on the number of people to whom access is given and the number of items for which that provision is granted. Therefore, the Government will have to move a long way in their secondary legislation to provide the sort of reassurance that Members and people outside this House seek. The second area of anxiety remains in the field of governance, and particularly in the separation of functions—and especially the National Statistician, non-executive members of the board and the scrutiny function. Earlier, we had a frustrating discussion in which the Minister agreed with what we were saying and we agreed with what he was saying, but he said, ““At the end of the day, we can’t include what you want in the Bill.”” That might be the case for legislative reasons, but I think that the Government might be able to deal with this issue in a satisfactory way and remove it from the list of problematic issues. Let me offer my suggestion. One of the organisations that has expressed concern about the lack of clarity in the governance procedures is the Bank of England. It said that the role of the National Statistician was not clear. If it is possible to do so, it would be desirable to get a letter from the Governor of the Bank of England stating that he has read the Minister’s comments in this House and that he is duly reassured and is now satisfied that the procedures and the demarcation of roles are clear and that there is no further doubt over the issue. If such a letter could be obtained, I do not think that any Member would quibble any further and we would accept that the matter has been dealt with in an entirely satisfactory way and that there is no need to change the legislation any further. The third area of concern is to do with the issue of the two tiers—the official statistics and the national statistics. We have gone a long way in trying to work with the Government model. They have made a strong case for a certain kind of model that distinguishes the two types of statistics. There is certainly a case for doing that, but we continue to be troubled by the fact that there is no ultimate veto over a ministerial veto. The Minister has the last resort, however much a set of official statistics is being abused at a departmental level. There appears to be absolutely no come-back to ensure that integrity can be restored. There are various ways in which a mechanism could be introduced. We suggested one this evening, but the Government did not find it satisfactory. However, a mechanism has to be found from somewhere, so that within this decentralised system, abuses of official statistics at a ministerial level can be safeguarded against. As the Bill proceeds to another place, I hope that the Government will come up with a formula for dealing with that problem. The final set of difficulties is the one that we discussed a few moments ago, and it relates to the role of the Treasury. Like the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, I am not anti-Treasury in any respect. It is has a very high level of competence and integrity, and I have no particular quarrel with the way that the current Chancellor has used his powers in making appointments, so there is no gripe or political point to be made here. The central issue is that the most sensitive Government statistics are those relating to economic data, such as employment and inflation statistics. It is therefore all the more important to ensure that the people who will exercise independent scrutiny and management of statistics are not appointed by the Minister with the most direct interest in influencing those statistics. It is not a question of the present incumbent abusing those powers; it is the potential for abuse that we must safeguard against. Channelling responsibility through the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office was one mechanism, and others have been suggested. However, it is very important that the Government acknowledge this potential conflict of interest. Like the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, I look forward to seeing the Bill when it returns to us from the other place. I suspect, on the basis of certain comments made by Lords, that there will be some difficult amendments for the Government to circumvent. There are strong feelings about this Bill and I look forward to debating it again when it returns.