Statistics and Registration Service Bill

It may be simple to put it in the Bill, but that is not the burden of the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. They are there to create an alternative model of how accountability should operate. Having identified that we have other illustrations of the Government in action, funding bodies in these terms, I am identifying at this stage how the Government envisage the board as working and the basis on which funding will be provided for it. It is crucial to the concept and structure of the board that that should be so. We are committing ourselves to a funding settlement. It will be for the board to decide on spending allocations for its functions, the census, new statistical initiatives and for what is at present the Office for National Statistics, but 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. Therefore, we are already acting in the spirit of the concept of independence of the way in which the board will operate—guaranteed funding will ensure that. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness and the House will recognise—I appreciate her commitment to an alternative model, and the work that has gone into that in this House and in the other place—that the Government have thought through these issues carefully and that, on the basis of public consultation, their broad position has been supported. The Treasury Committee in the other place is one important body that supports them on the crucial issues contained in the government model. I hope, therefore, that the noble Baroness will feel that she has at least probed satisfactorily into the government model and is able to withdraw her amendment.