Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 162: 162: Clause 29, page 13, line 17, at end insert— ““( ) The National Statistician shall produce a business plan covering functions relating to all official statistics at least once every three years.”” The noble Lord said: We return here to the planning of statistics, which I suggest should be a function of the National Statistician. Members of the Committee will remember that at Second Reading I drew attention to the fact that the present framework requires the National Statistician, or the chief statistician, to produce a high-level business plan for statistics in relation not just to the ONS—I am afraid that I shall continue to refer to the ONS, which is a very good brand name—but to all national statistics. That was in the framework, but there is nothing in the Bill. At Second Reading I asked why not. In addition, the current framework for statistics places an obligation on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to maintain and develop the co-ordination structure for national statistics. Again, that responsibility has not been assigned to the board or to the National Statistician and is, therefore, apparently lost. At Second Reading, I asked why that should be. I received no satisfactory answers to these questions, so I am having another go. There is nothing in the Bill which gives either the board or the National Statistician explicit authority for co-ordinating statistical planning across more than 20 Whitehall producers of official statistics or the devolved Administrations. All that the Bill enables the board to do is to monitor and report on the statistical plans of the various largely autonomous bodies under Clause 8. Planning to meet the statistical needs of the country is a highly demanding task, which I am advised, in the view of many, is not well done now. We have had the recent row over the migration statistics. A few years ago there was a row over the pension statistics. There have been arguments over the regional economic statistics, which were the subject of the 2004 Allsopp report commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That report pointed to the inadequacy of those statistics. At Second Reading I mentioned several examples of where often policies are embarked on with no statistical base at all. I cited the example of the New Deal and a number of others. In all these areas, the provision of statistics has lagged some way behind the requirement of the Government, let alone the requirements of the country more generally. It is my view, and I hope that the Committee might agree, that good planning is essential to make sure that needs are recognised early and properly addressed. Let me give a further more recent example of this. Last week, the Institute for Social & Economic Research at Essex University, a body for which I have high regard, announced a new household panel survey of 40,000 households, which is a substantial enlargement of the existing British household panel study. It is being financed by the Economic and Social Research Council. Like the British household panel study, it will be a longitudinal survey—again, I attach the highest importance to that—and will follow the survey sample over many years. The proposers recognise, and argue, that to trace the social development of different categories of citizen in this way provides much more effective information on which policies can be based. But if neither the National Statistician nor the Statistics Board has any authority to plan or co-ordinate this new statistical survey, will it just go the way of the others that I have mentioned? Simply gathering together the routine statistical plans of individual organisations does little to raise the game of the statistical service. This is already done now and the resulting product gives little overall sense of co-ordination or purpose, which is not surprising as the chief statistician does not have the authority to impose co-ordination or co-operation on any of these parties. The absence of any authority to co-ordinate statistical planning is a major weakness. My amendment suggests that at least once every three years, the National Statistician must produce a plan for statistics across the board. This role belongs firmly to the National Statistician as the Government’s chief adviser, as we have discussed earlier. The board’s role is to make sure that it is done well and to report to Parliament on its assessment in that regard. That is the purpose of my amendment. I did not get good answers at Second Reading, but I hope that I may get some decent answers now. I beg to move.