Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, we are on Report. I am not prepared to go into a wide discourse now about a range of other issues related to this. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and other Members of the House brought the important issue of crime to my attention, but I was using it merely as an illustration of the problem. I am not going to open up a big discussion on crime rates and the degree of public trust in these issues. If I did, we would stray way beyond Report stage and our concentration on this amendment. I am talking only about one specific part of the amendment; namely, the level of public trust. The board has levers to achieve its objectives, but we cannot expect it to be responsible for meeting an obligation to enhance levels of public trust. There are simply too many other factors involved in the situation for the board to take that as a chief responsibility. The board’s objective rightly focuses on helping to deliver high-quality and comprehensive statistics that serve the public good. That is what we should expect of the board, and it is something the board can take a direct role in, using the functions assigned to it in the Bill. While I am sure the board will wish to undertake work to determine levels of public trust—to seek to understand better what causes levels of public trust to change and to play its part in helping to improve levels as necessary—that is not something that it alone can control. I am therefore resisting the crucial part of the amendment being included in the core objectives, which of course Clause 7 involves. I accept from the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, to whose arguments on this front I paid tribute to earlier today, and from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, who has emphasised this point again, that local statistics are important. I can reassure the House that the wording of the objective was drafted using the term ““public policy”” to encompass the fact that official statistics should play a role in supporting the evaluation of policy at all levels, be that local, regional, national or even international. Amendment No. 4 goes on further to specify that serving the public good should include, "““meeting the information needs of users””." User needs are important, and the board’s objective already states that it is to promote and safeguard the quality, comprehensiveness and good practice of official statistics, including accessibility, relevance and coherence. In fulfilling that objective, clearly stated in Clause 7, the board will undoubtedly need to set up mechanisms to establish user interest and to set about addressing them. The amendment specifies producing benefits for citizens. As we have said repeatedly during the course of the Bill, one of the core reasons the Bill was amended in the other place was to make quite explicit the Government’s belief that official statistics exist to serve the public in the widest sense, not just to help the work of Government. I hope it will be recognised that the amendment identifies areas that the Government have thought about clearly and carefully and believe are included within the broad aims of Clause 7. We wish to defend the clause as being a realistic, proper and accurate definition of what the board should seek to achieve. For that reason, I hope the noble Baroness will be prepared to withdraw her amendment.