Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill establishes a statistical 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; greater transparency, flexibility and value for money, and greater independence from Ministers. This is the first major statistics legislation since the Statistics of Trade Act 1947. The Bill builds on the framework for national statistics introduced in 2000 and establishes a statistics system that can evolve in the light of new, shifting statistical demands and experience. 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. The creation of the new independent Statistics Board is the centrepiece of the Bill. Given the unique features of the UK’s long established and strongly supported decentralised system of statistical production, the Government wanted to establish a single oversight board to set standards, to scrutinise the statistical system, and to provide the top layer of governance for what is at present the Office for National Statistics. A single board also avoids competing independent centres of statistical expertise, which might ultimately confuse and undermine confidence in the system. Vesting accountability across a corporate board rather than in a single individual is also consistent with best practice in corporate governance, be that in the private or the public sector. The Bill removes Ministers from the accountability structure for the Office for National Statistics. The new statutory board will undertake the role currently performed by Ministers, and the National Statistician, a post that we are retaining and enhancing in the Bill, will continue to run the statistics office, as she does now, answering to the board instead of Ministers. In the other place, concerns were raised about how the arrangement for funding the board might impinge on its independence. It is important to ensure that the funding arrangements for the new board reinforce statutory independence. That is why the Government have taken the decision that funding for the new Statistics Board will be set outside of the normal government spending review process. To meet our key requirements of independence, transparency and flexibility, we have also taken the decision to guarantee the board funding certainty over a period of five years. The funding allocation for the 2011 census will be made on a five-year period aligned with the overall budget for the board. As set out in the Budget last week, the Government have announced a funding settlement of £1.2 billion over the next five years for the new Statistics Board. The settlement applies to the years 2007-08 to 2011-12, providing planning and funding certainty for the development of the new board and the effective discharge of its remit from the intended establishment of the new system by spring 2008. Within this funding settlement it will be for the board to decide on spending allocations for the board’s functions, the census, new statistical initiatives, and for what is at present the Office for National Statistics. However, nearly £30 million has been earmarked for new functions specific to independence, including establishing and maintaining the board’s delivery of the independent assessment of statistics, and developing and managing the proposed central publication hub. The settlement also ensures a secure basis for delivering the 2011 census, providing significant resources for a range of improvements to quality and coverage over the previous exercise. In line with the importance of delivering value for money across government, the board is expected to meet existing ONS efficiency and relocation commitments and deliver further efficiency savings across the settlement period. The quality of the board’s membership will clearly be crucial to ensuring the board’s independence. To that end, the Government have made a commitment that all board members will be appointed by open competition, in line with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments guidance. The Government intend that the new system will begin in April 2008. We therefore aim to have a shadow chair with appropriate support appointed as soon as possible ahead of that time. The board’s core statutory objective is established in Clause 7. The board is required to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. It will also promote and safeguard the quality, comprehensiveness and good practice of official statistics. The board will deliver its objective through three main functions. First, its statutory duties, in Clauses 8 and 9, are to monitor and report on areas of concern about the quality and comprehensiveness of, and good practice in relation to, all official statistics across government and their arm’s-length bodies, as the Statistics Commission does now, and to develop and promote definitions, methodologies, classifications and standards for official statistics. Secondly, in Clauses 10 to 17, there is a requirement to draw up a code of practice to set professional standards for the production of statistics; to assess and approve all existing national statistics—currently, some 1,300 individual products—independently against these standards; similarly, to assess all additional statistics nominated by Ministers for approval as new national statistics; and to ensure that oversight is stronger and more transparent and to publish the results of these assessments for all—especially for Parliament—to see. Finally, in Clause 29, there is the function of oversight of the executive office of the National Statistician. We would expect that office to discharge the board’s statistical production functions, which are currently undertaken by the ONS. I propose to speak first about the key mechanism—the board’s assessment function. The definition of official statistics that we have used in the Bill is wide, covering all statistics produced by Government and their agencies, the devolved Administrations and Crown bodies. This will allow the board to monitor and report on the ever increasing range of official statistics and official statistical information that is being produced across government and which we expect to continue to grow in years to come. The starting point for the board’s process of assessment and approval of those key statistics upon which the Government, business and the public rely is those statistics that are currently designated as national statistics. The system can evolve as additional statistics can be nominated to the board for assessment by the person responsible for those statistics—usually the relevant Minister. Additionally, as part of the board’s duty to monitor and report on the comprehensiveness and coverage of the system, we expect it to comment publicly on which official statistics should be nominated to the board for assessment. We have ensured that, within the single structure that we propose, there is a clear separation between the board’s production and scrutiny responsibilities. In the other place, the Treasury Select Committee urged us to do that; I believe that the Bill largely achieves those requirements. First, the board’s assessment function will be operationally independent of statistical production within the National Statistician’s executive office. A statutory post-holder—the head of assessment—reporting directly to the board will lead the assessment function and all staff working on assessment. The Bill also strengthens the role of the National Statistician. As I have already mentioned, the National Statistician will be required to establish the board’s executive office and appoint its other members and staff. We expect the executive office to undertake the statistical executive production activities on a day-to-day basis, just as the ONS does now. In addition, for the first time, the National Statistician will be a statutory post appointed by the Crown, rather than, as now, by Ministers. She or he will be the board’s chief executive and will run the body, which is essentially currently the Office for National Statistics. The National Statistician will continue to be the chief statistical adviser to the Government and to the board on all professional and statistical matters, and will be head of the Government Statistical Service. She or he will be a full member of the board, sharing responsibility with the other board members for the ultimate decision-making, rather than, as now, advising the Minister. Taken as a whole, this is unquestionably a more significant, high-profile post than the current one. I now turn to how we are using this opportunity to build further value into the system. The Bill creates a framework that will ensure the continued sharingof data between the board and other parts of government for the purpose of statistical production and analysis—for example, the sharing of birth and death registration data between the board and the Registrar General, after the Registrar General separates from the statistics office. In addition, at Clauses 44 to 50, the Bill includes a mechanism to allow for increased sharing of data between the board and other public authorities, and vice versa, where that sharing is similarly for the sole purpose of statistical production and analysis and only where such sharing is judged to be in the public interest. The specific extensions of access would be agreed through secondary legislation, subject tofull parliamentary scrutiny through the affirmative resolution procedure. This part of the Bill has received broad support from a range of stakeholders, including the Statistics Commission, the Royal Statistical Society and the opposition parties. Sharing of administrative data for statistical purposes can improve the quality of statistical data and analysis, and therefore improve our ability to make and judge the impact of policy. This re-use of data means that statisticians can produce richer statistics without needing to survey again on the same topic. It also has the potential to bring real benefits in reducing the burden on those who are required to complete the surveys upon which many of our official statistics depend. This has therefore been recommended by both the Better Regulation Task Force and the Confederation of British Industry. Within the Whitehall-wide Administrative Burden Reduction Project, the Office for National Statistics has committed, as part of its simplification plan, to a £10 million reduction in burdens on business up to 2015, of which £6 million is expected to come from the use of administrative data for statistical purposes in place of survey returns. Enhanced sharing of administrative data will also help to address the problems of declining survey response rates. Response rates in many of the ONS’s surveys have also been declining over the years; for example, the response rate to the General Household Survey was 83 per cent when it started in 1971 but that fell to 72 per cent in 2005. As survey response rates decline, the higher the chances become of the survey results being biased and not properly representing the true state of the population. In broad terms, increased data sharing could occur between the board and other public authorities, where regulations are made under Clauses 44 to 50 permitting such sharing. The regulations will be subject to further scrutiny and approval by Parliament and will be made only where the Treasury, by virtue of its residual responsibilities for the board, and another Minister agree that the sharing of information is for statistical purposes of the board or the public authority to which the disclosure is made, and in the public interest. Clauses 44 to 50 will permit further sharing under powers set out in regulations rather than in primary legislation. That will allow the system to adapt to future statistical resources and needs, allowing new indicators to be developed to provide a more accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive and meaningful description of the UK. While there is a strong public interest in greater sharing of administrative data, I recognise that there is also a public interest in ensuring that the confidentiality of such data is properly protected. We have attempted to ensure that the Bill strikes an appropriate balance. A crucial part of the board maintaining its credibility in collecting data is that there are the highest levels of protection for personal information. We hope that the existence of such safeguards within the Bill will help to address to declining response rates to which I have just referred. The Bill therefore introduces a criminal sanction on the unlawful disclosure of information concerning both individuals and businesses, whether held by board members and employees or by anyone to whom the board has passed the data, where that information identifies the individual or business, or where it might allow someone to deduce their identity. This criminal sanction, which could be up to two years’ imprisonment for unlawful disclosure of data, is a key addition to the confidentiality regime for personal information collected by the board. The confidentiality provision at Clause 36 is structured to allow the sharing which currently goes on between the Office for National Statistics and other public authorities to continue and to facilitate extensions of data sharing between the board and the public sector under the regulation-making powers at Clauses 44 to 50. The necessary exceptions at subsection (4) of the clause—for example, to allow for disclosure for the purposes of a criminal investigation—therefore reflect that. In doing that, the Government were conscious of the human rights implications and sensitive to the need to strike an appropriate balance between the wider public interest in data sharing and the rights of the individual. I am pleased to note that the Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded that the Bill did not raise sufficiently significant human rights issues for it to examine the Bill further. Since the publication of the Bill, the Information Commissioner’s Office has told the Treasury that the Information Commissioner very much welcomed the creation of a criminal offence for the illegal disclosure of personal information in Clause 36, which he believed should act as a significant deterrent. He also welcomed the measures in the Bill that aim to ensure that any personal information required by the board for the production of statistics is tightly controlled and used only for the purposes required to exercise its functions. Overall, the Information Commissioner welcomed the fact that the Bill recognises the importance of ensuring that personal information is used only where necessary and that confidentiality is respected. Perhaps the area of the Bill over which there has been the most controversy is the principle of pre-release access by Ministers and officials to official statistics in their final form prior to release. Despite the areas of disagreement on this, I hope that the House will recognise, as the Opposition did in the other place, the acceptance of the clear and internationally accepted case, in principle, for pre-release access to statistics. I also hope that the Opposition, in particular, will agree that the new system as set out in the Bill will benefit from increased clarity and transparency on when and to whom pre-release is granted and under what conditions. In recognition of that, the Bill will put new, tighter pre-release arrangements on a statutory footing.