Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 147: 147: Clause 28, page 12, line 35, at end insert— ““( ) The National Statistician shall be the government’s principal advisor on statistics and provide professional leadership to all persons engaged in statistical production and publication.”” The noble Lord said: The amendment takes us back to earlier Committee debates. At one level, it states the blindingly obvious, that: "““The National Statistician shall be the government’s principal advisor on statistics and provide professional leadership to all persons engaged in statistical production and publication””." I do not think that anybody would doubt either of those statements. It is pretty obvious that the National Statistician will be the Government’s principal adviser on statistics. However, we tabled this amendment because we want to establish clearly and get on the record that the role of the National Statistician will not be limited to statistics that the board and the National Statistician provide and will include statistics provided across government. Given the debate we had on the distinction in the Bill between official statistics and national statistics—I am sure we will return to that issue on Report—the view of these Benches is that the National Statistician should have an overview of all statistics produced by government and that the code should apply to them all. In a sense, this is a companion amendment to those that we debated earlier about the difference between the two sorts of statistics. The value of such an amendment is that it makes clear that whoever is producing statistics in government must look to the National Statistician for advice and leadership. Given the situation in respect of official statistics not covered by the code, the Bill requires an amendment of this nature. I beg to move.