Statistics and Registration Service Bill

It saddens me to part company with the alliance that I have had with the noble Lord, Lord Moser. At Second Reading, I was almost alone in arguing the case for a unitary board. I wanted a situation in which the statistics produced and the methodologies that underpinned them were seen as being published with the full authority of the board. I was worried that those might be personalised to the National Statistician, which would put a tremendous personal pressure on the holder of the post. I gave examples from previous regimes of Secretaries of State speaking pretty abusively about the National Statistician in ways which I do not believe would happen if the statistics were produced in the name of the board. There may be one or two specific functions, such as who consults the Bank of England, that are relevant to the National Statistician, but in general the construction of the Bill safeguards that position already. The National Statistician is the principal adviser: that is in Clause 28(1); the board has to ““have regard to”” that advice, as set out in Clause 28(2); and if the board overrules the statistician, it must give reasons, as set out in Clause 28(3). In effect, the National Statistician’s advice is board policy, unless there is some reason not to do it. There are important advantages in having advice that is seen to have the backing not just of the National Statistician, who is after all an official like the rest of us. It means that a Minister who wants to pick an argument cannot do so with the National Statistician alone but must do so with the board as a whole. There may be one or two exceptions, but for the most part, I would leave ““board”” where ““board”” is stated and rely on the structure set out in Clause 28.