Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 163: 163: Clause 29, page 13, line 22, leave out paragraph (a) The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 164, 166 and 167. They are probing amendments and concern the extent to which the assessment function will be fully separated within the Statistics Board. The structure of the Statistics Board in the Bill rests on being able to separate the function of assessment from the other functions. As assessment of statistics applies to those statistics produced by the ONS, or its successor, as well as those produced elsewhere in government, the function of assessment and separation of that function is critical. The Bill provides that the head of assessment is not to be a member of the executive office which is headed by the National Statistician. That is quite right, but no mention is made of the staff who will carry out the assessment processes. My Amendment No. 163 removes paragraph (a) of Clause 29(10), which refers to the head of assessment only. Amendment No. 164 replaces this with a new paragraph which will ensure that not only the head of assessment but also his staff will not be in the executive office. Clause 31(3) does try to deal with the issue of keeping staff separate, though it implies that the staff could in fact be members of the executive office. But the board, under Clause 31(3), secures this separation only ““so far as practicable””. We do not think that this is anything like strong enough. It must be evident that the staff must not work on the production of statistics. The function of assessment is akin to an audit function and one of the primary characteristics of audit—whether external or internal—is independence. Auditors have to avoid various threats, such as familiarity, self-review, intimidation and self-interest, all of which could arise if the assessment function used members of the executive office to carry out its work. Amendment No. 166 deletes the words ““so far as practicable”” from Clause 31(3). Amendment No. 167 reinforces that by extending the requirement for the head of assessment not to take part in the production of statistics to the staff of the head of assessment. Perhaps I may return briefly to the role of the National Statistician as the chief executive of the board. That implies that the head of assessment is inferior to the National Statistician because he has to be an employee of the board even if not actually a member of the board. I understand the desire to create a board with two streams of activity which are independent of each other, but I do not believe that the Bill achieves that with clarity. I tried in Amendment No. 150, which we debated on our first Committee day, to argue that the National Statistician should be the chief executive not of the board but of the executive office. That was because I could not see how the National Statistician could be the chief executive of the board because one important stream of activity—that of assessment—had to be kept entirely separate. I continue to be concerned on this score. I said earlier that these were probing amendments and I hope that the Minister can explain how, under the Bill, the head of assessment and his staff are properly separate from and independent of the National Statistician and the executive office. I beg to move.