Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these amendments and for listening to the proceedings in your Lordships’ House at Second Reading and in Committee. This group contains a number of amendments tabled in my name and in those of other noble Lords. The Minister will be aware that we tabled them prior to the Government tabling theirs, and I should say at the outset that I do not intend to move the amendments that stand in my name or to oppose the government amendments. However, we hope that there may be a little reflection by the Government between now and Third Reading on one or two aspects. Perhaps I may deal with those. The first is that Amendment No. 11 would describe the code as applying just to ““statistics””. We did not like the fact that it would apply just to national statistics, and that is why, in our amendment, we propose that it should apply to official statistics, which are now defined in the Bill. Will the Minister explain the subtlety of saying that it is a code for statistics? Is it intended to apply to statistics prepared by voluntary or commercial organisations and, if so, how does that fit in with the Bill? Essentially, the Bill deals with statistics produced by government, which is why we used the Government’s own definition of ““official statistics”” in renaming the code. Perhaps the Minister will deal with that point when he replies. The second point concerns compliance with the code. The Minister will be aware—he referred to it—that that was one of the very important issues that we debated at some length in Committee. The Royal Statistical Society and the Statistics Commission were united with us against the Government’s position on this matter. The Government have already created a duty of compliance for national statistics, so that leaves open the possibility of government departments keeping their statistics out of the national statistics net if they want to cheat on the rules. I know that there are some mechanisms for doing so and I shall come to those in a minute. We think that that is undesirable. The duty to comply should be more widely drawn and should not relate only to statistics that happen already to have been brought within the national statistics assessment process. I have tabled Amendment No. 16, which deletes the words ““but no action shall lie in relation to any such failure””, as an amendment to Amendment No. 15, to probe what the Government intend by those words. The Minister said that the intention was that no legal action should lie in relation to non-compliance. I wanted to ensure that the Minister was entirely content and desired the Statistics Board to take action in the sense of shouting loudly and often about non-compliance. We accept that legal action would be inappropriate, but the other subtle ways of bringing pressure to bear on non-compliers is particularly important. That brings us to the new procedure and duty in Amendment No. 22. As the Minister knows, we would have preferred assessment to be in the hands of the board. We regard the Minister's AmendmentNo. 22 procedure as a naming and shaming provision because it will ensure that the board looks at those cases of statistics that have not come forward for national statistics assessment and name them if they are inappropriate to that category. We are certainly happy to support that and I hope that the result will be that the majority of statistics, certainly all those that have any significance, will be national statistics within a relatively short period of time. With those remarks, I reiterate that we are happy to support the Government's amendments.