Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 7, page 4, line 27, leave out second ““and”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 4. These amendments seek to extend the definition of the public good objective in Clause 7 by adding to the explanation of public good, which is found in subsection (2). It says that serving the public good, "““includes in particular … informing the public about social and economic matters, and … assisting in the development and evaluation of public policy””." We have no problem with that definition as far as it goes; it simply does not go far enough. Doubtless, the Minister will say that my amendment is unnecessary because the existing drafting is ““precise, succinct and clear”” and that ““endless refinements”” do not help—at least, that is what he said in Committee. I would like to explain why the drafting is not precise, succinct and clear enough. I believe it to be Whitehall-centric. One way or another, the amendment is designed to stretch the footprint of the definition of public good so that it is indeed clear that it covers some other vital elements of public good. The first bit of clarification is the addition of the words, "““at national and local levels””," to the public policy reference in Clause 7(2)(b). Of course, the existing drafting does not exclude the evaluation of policy at other than the national level, but the practice to date has been that the local dimension of statistics has been the second cousin, or even further removed than that, to national statistics. The fact that the Local Government Association and bodies representing the regions are concerned about the recognition of their needs in the Bill is proof enough that we should be doing something positive to ensure that the Statistics Board has those issues at the heart of its work. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, made the other points relevant to that leg of my amendment. My amendment also deals with, "““meeting the information needs of users of statistics””." That also relates to the needs of local government and other non-national-level users of statistics, but goes beyond that. In Committee, I cited the information needs of those involved in issues of domestic and social cohesion, which are not fully met by current statistics. There will be plenty of other examples. User orientation is not covered by the current wording and its absence implies that users are not an important element in defining what is meant by serving the public good. A further leg of my amendment is the need to produce ““benefits for citizens””. The current wording talks about ““informing the public””. That certainly does not go far enough. I am sure that citizens benefit from being informed, but ““benefits for citizens”” operates on a much wider plane. For example, it involves having a statistical system that meets the highest standards. It would be possible for the wording of Clause 7(2) to be met with little perceptible advantage for citizens. That is closely linked with the final element, which is, "““achieving high levels of public trust in statistics””." It is curious that a Bill that we all believe is important because it offers a chance to restore public trust is so coy about even mentioning the subject of public trust. Citizens benefit when we have a system of statistics that is both excellent in itself and trusted. That in turn will increase the degree of trust attached to the policies which statistics underpin, which leads to better government. My case is not that it is impossible to stretch the interpretation of the current definition to meet the items that I have mentioned, but that by ignoring those items we are left with a definition of serving the public good that is exclusive and Whitehall-centric. We believe that a more inclusive definition that incorporates local needs, user needs, citizens and public trust would more fairly communicate what I hope that the Government agree are important components of the public good. We believe that those elements are so important that they should be in the Bill, not left to the vagaries of legal interpretation once the Bill has passed into law. I beg to move.