Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I am grateful for the way in which the noble Baroness described her Motion, even though I am in great danger of repeating the main principles that I adumbrated with regard to the first amendment. It created an alternate model and embraced a range of concepts about how the board will work, and I therefore do not have a great deal to add to what I said then. The noble Baroness freely and generously conceded that our public consultation and the deliberations of the Treasury Select Committee of another place confirmed that the Government should identify the board as a Crown body, which is the basis on which we are working. As I indicated, we are convinced that statistics are a public good that serve a wide range of users and it is right that statistical production remains an executive function. The noble Baroness asked me a specific question about the accounting officer. We expect the National Statistician to be the accounting officer for the board. I think that we are going to have an extensive debate on the role of the National Statistician, its importance and the extent to which these new arrangements pay proper regard to the highly significant position that he occupies. I have no doubt that we will return to those issues. However, the specific answer to the noble Baroness’s question is as I identified. On the more general points that she raised, I think that I answered them in the debate on the previous amendment. We expect Parliament to play a central role in holding the statistical system to account under the new system, and we expect that there will be full accountability to Parliament for it. However, Ministers will have only the residual responsibility of the interface with Parliament because only they can be directly accountable to Parliament for the operation of the board. They will act as a conduit for the answering of parliamentary questions by the board and the National Statistician and will lay the board’s annual report before Parliament. They will also be responsible for piloting secondary legislation through Parliament and for the structure for appointments. We have models of non-ministerial departments that work satisfactorily. The most important feature—and the confirmation that I want to emphasise—is that the new board will be established as a Crown body with a defined range of functions and its staff will be civil servants. I know that there is an issue about certain Crown servants being transferred to work for the board. We will have a chance to discuss that in some detail later, and I hope that I will be able to give the fullest possible assurances about the welfare of such individuals within this framework. The board will not be an executive agency of any government department. It will not report to Ministers. Parliament will play the central role in holding the statistical system to account under the new system, and the board will be fully accountable to Parliament for the statistical system. As I have indicated, the board will have its own funding arrangements. I realise that I will not be able to reassure entirely the most sceptical Members of the Committee when I describe the funding mechanism that we intend to put in place, which we have already started partially to activate within the framework of the most that we can do under law at present. It is not conceivable that we would put the detail of the funding arrangements for this body in legislation. That does not obtain with any other comparable body, and we are not doing so. What we are doing is making explicit and absolutely clear the five-year funding model which guarantees the dependence, which was the subject of the debate on the previous amendment. I hope that the noble Baroness feels that in this short debate on Clause 2 she has reinforced her anxieties derived from her earlier amendments, but that I have helped perhaps to allay them.