Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I welcomed the Bill initially. I wanted to support it enthusiastically, because it ought to have ensured confidence in the statistics that politicians, statisticians, planners, community groups and local authorities all use, and because it ought to have confirmed the validity of statistics that are removed from departmental interference, be that real or perceived. There are good things in the Bill. I am particularly taken with the creation of the new separate publicity hub for the dissemination of statistics once they are published. That is a good initiative and one to be welcomed. However, because there will not be forced adherence to the code of practice for all the key statistics, because all Departments can avoid making key statistics national statistics, and because the Bill will still allow the Treasury to appoint the board, the Chancellor to veto direction and the Treasury to veto the disclosure of data, I fear that the great hopes that many of us had for the new independent board may not be realised, or at least not as quickly as we would have hoped. We will not oppose the Bill tonight, because the principle of independence supersedes the weaknesses in the detail. However, Members on both sides know of flawed statistics and I am certain that, although we all wish the new board well, we will keep in our sights all the statistics that we know to be flawed and monitor them ourselves to determine whether they improve. This is not something that needs to be included in the Bill, but, to help us to do that, it might be useful if, annually, a Treasury Minister were to come to the House and make a brief statement to comment on the list of designated national statistics that must be published annually anyway by the new board under clause 16. That would go a long way towards reassuring the House that there was not simply a monitoring of the process and of Departments by individual Members, but a clear, united monitoring of the whole process and how it is proceeding by the House. That could be achieved by means of the rather simple mechanism of a statement considering the published list of national statistics, which under statute must be produced every year anyway.