Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken to our Amendment No. 148, not least the noble Lord, Lord Desai, because he has given us a starkly different interpretation from that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. In an ideal world, this amendment would not be necessary. One would imagine that the National Statistician, who is responsible for the corpus of statistics—if that is the right collective noun for statistics—would comment publicly if she felt that they were being misinterpreted. While I take what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, says and agree that many statistics are open to a number of interpretations, I believe that in some cases they are clearly misinterpreted, whichever logical view one might take. The reason for tabling the amendment is to give the National Statistician legal cover so that, if or when she wished to comment on a set of statistics that had been misinterpreted, she would be protected against a barrage from Ministers. If, in responding to the debate, the Minister says that the amendment is completely unnecessary because the Government accept that this would be part of the role of the National Statistician, we would be pleased to hear that. Otherwise, the amendment is important.