Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, we have had a useful debate on one of the core aspects of the Bill. As the House will recognise, the Government never thought there was a muddle about the governance structure and the respective roles and responsibilities of the board and the National Statistician. However, in so far as through debate we have been pressed for greater clarification on the issues—we hope we have succeeded in providing it—the Bill has been advanced and strengthened. The amendments, tabled both by the Government and by other Members of the House, broadly reflect a goal we all share—that of making the Bill as clear as possible on governance and roles and responsibilities. We are legislating in some respects for a dynamic situation. This is the first creative phase with regard to the board, so the definition of the role of the chairman, the amount of time that he or she will devote to it and the remuneration reflect the arduousness of creating a very substantial institution. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, that that can change when we get into steady state—that the demands may not be so great on the chairman then. I also agree with a number of other noble Lords that, as with so many boards and the relationship between the chairman and the chief executive, the relationship between the chairman and the National Statistician may change in respect of their personalities and how they work together. We all know that there has to be recognition of evolving change in those terms, but this board is like no other. We seek to create an effective board with the two key figures working together to reach the objectives for which it was established, but we recognise that the relationship between them may change over time. Of course the Government are committed to the governance structure established in the Bill, in which the single legal entity charged with delivering the functions in the Bill is the Statistics Board. The Bill provides for a single institutional structure with a board that is legally responsible and accountable for all the body’s functions in line with the principles of good corporate governance. The Bill establishes that the board will be a mix of executives and non-executives, although we are legislating to ensure that there is always a clear non-executive majority. We expect that the executive business of the board will be discharged by professionals, acting under the board’s direction, but the legal authority to act on behalf of the Statistics Board flows through the board, and it must therefore retain the authority to act in relation to matters for which it is accountable. As the noble Lord, Lord Moser, indicated, one aspect of that is its accountability to Parliament. This issue was mooted during the debate on the previous amendment. The noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord Newby, referred to it with regard to statistics on migration, which are causing considerable public comment. If the board were in existence, the interest of Members of Parliament would force it to respond in the way that I have, in most perfunctory fashion, sought to identify. I have no doubt that Parliament would expect the board to respond in a committed and effective way to a problem that arises. The model we are using is a straightforward one for the governance of public authorities. We believe that it is the most effective way to deliver greater independence for the Office for National Statistics and independent scrutiny and oversight of the statistical system as a whole, while avoiding the creation of competing centres of statistical expertise within it. The unitary structure is the right approach. That is why I have resisted amendments that would fracture the single structure and leave unclear who is legally accountable for the functions specified in the Bill. A mixed executive/non-executive board would no longer have the capacity to ensure the discharge of the functions for which we wish it to be responsible. All it would have the power to do is to monitor the National Statistician as he or she exercised those functions, and the National Statistician would be able to ignore any views the board might have about how its executive functions should be discharged. The burden of some of the amendments we have considered is to confine the role of the non-executives merely to monitoring, which would be a tremendous waste of the talent and experience that we intend them to bring to the board and to the statistical system as a whole. This is a standard approach in statutes that establish new legal entities. For example, the board follows the pattern of the Food Standards Agency, which was set up under the Food Standards Act. The non-ministerial department established in that Act consists of the13 or so people who sit on its board. The board is charged with the responsibility for carrying out a range of functions, which those 13 people clearly do not have the capacity to do on their own. The Food Standards Act, like the Statistics and Registration Service Bill, provides a flexible framework. That framework enables the Food Standards Agency to discharge its functions, either through decisions at board level or through delegations to staff. That also applies in respect of taxation and the powers that are vested in the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. I do not think that the model of unitary governance in the Bill leads to confusion. The arguments that have been put forward and amendments that have been tabled have obliged us to be more specific about several of those functions and I recognise that the House has made a considerable contribution to the most important feature of the Bill: the structure and responsibilities of the board and its operations. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about the National Statistician as the chief executive of only the production function. That is the primary responsibility of the Statistics Board. The fact that he is not involved directly in the assessment of the Statistics Board’s own functions does not prevent him being ultimately responsible as the chief executive for ensuring the effective and efficient discharge of the board’s functions. It is not unusual for a chief executive of any corporate body not to be directly involved in the assessment function. Nevertheless, he or she takes final responsibility for all the board’s actions. I hope the noble Lord will recognise that we are not departing from past models regarding how the board will work in these terms. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for her understanding of the Government’s attempts to respond to some of the points she has made in the past. She will recognise that the National Statistician as chief executive of the board has a relationship to the chairman. The chairman is also accountable for the work of the board. In that sense, there is an element of review between them of the National Statistician’s work. The noble Baroness will recognise that the National Statistician is a civil servant. Therefore, at some stage he may also be responsible to the head of the Civil Service. This is a significant post in public life. We all recognise that. He or she is being greatly strengthened by this concept of the board, which produces a distance from the Government. However, with a board of this significance—the noble Lord, Lord Moser, indicated this in his contribution about accountability to Parliament—one cannot separate the board and its great significance from public accountability and, ultimately, full government responsibility for the effectiveness of its actions. I appreciate that the Government could have been a little quicker off the mark and therefore perhaps have reduced the workload on the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in producing her amendments, although she had already foreshadowed those by her work in Committee. I hope that she will recognise that our amendments go a considerable way to meeting arguments advanced on these most important issues. I trust that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment and that in due course the House will give its support to the government amendments when they are moved.