Statistics and Registration Service Bill

It is always difficult to generalise out of personal experience. I have been a chief executive of a public corporation, the Commonwealth Development Corporation, and I was not on the board. The fact that its chief executive was not on the board certainly enhanced the independence of the Commonwealth Development Corporation in those days. The board made its decisions and carried out its full statutory obligations. It mostly accepted the recommendations of the executive before it made its decisions, but on occasions it did not and it told the executive to go back and think again or even to drop some of its plans. Given that there is no read-across from the private sector to the Statistics Board, this is a completely different operation. The system of appointment is completely different; the system of reappointment is completely different; the systems of remuneration are completely different. The objectives of the organisation have nothing to do with the objectives of a private sector organisation. I asked the Minister to give me an example of a read-across from the private sector and he cited the FSA and its wish to see balanced boards, but what body does the FSA regulate that is remotely like the proposed Statistics Board? If the National Statistician is not on the board, the status and standing of, and public trust in, the National Statistician will be enormously enhanced, because it will be very much more difficult for Her Majesty the Queen, as advised and decided by the Prime Minister, to dis-appoint the National Statistician. It will not be at all difficult to change the members of the non-executive board. That is easy for Her Majesty's Government to do under the system of public appointments. We should therefore support these amendments to separate the role of the non-executive board from the role of the National Statistician as the board’s chief executive.