Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I agree with almost every word that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said. To my mind this goes absolutely to the heart of the matter. The only point on which I disagree with the noble Lord is with regard to his reference to infelicitous drafting. With respect, I do not think that is the case. I believe that the Government are genuinely confused about the role of the National Statistician and that of the board. As the noble Lord said, I thought we were all agreed that the production and dissemination of statistics is the job of the National Statistician, while the job of the board is to oversee and scrutinise that process. Yet here we have in the Bill as drafted the board doing one thing after another that amounts to the production or dissemination of statistics. The noble Lord took us through the whole range of the amendments. This is one of the most important groups of amendments and we have to get this right. I fear that at the moment there is confusion. Our advisers describe it simply as very muddled. If ever there were a need for clarity, it is in differentiating between the function of the National Statistician, the professional man or woman—one must say woman because the post is held by a woman at the moment—who has the professional expertise and must have the professional independence to use that expertise, and that of the board which oversees the process. I draw a parallel with the time when I chaired a health trust and had a consultant surgeon on my board. There was never any conceivable suggestion that I could tell him how to do his job. He was there in a somewhat different capacity. Any suggestion that non-executive chairmen or directors can tell professional people how to do their jobs is absurd. My right honourable friend David Cameron has made the point that we need to trust professional people and give them the independence to get on with their jobs and not tell them what to do the whole time. I fear that, as the Bill as drafted, this is totally confused, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, made very clear. I regard this as an extremely important set of amendments. I hope that when the time comes we shall vote to get clarity because the position is not clear at the moment.