Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, as this is my sole contribution to our debates on Report, I trust that the House will indulge me if I paint a fairly wide canvas. I hope that the self-evident merits of AmendmentNo. 24 will, on reflection, have become apparent to the Minister and his colleagues in the Government. I shall return to the substance of the matter in a moment and I trust that it will receive a favourable response. The other reason I would far rather avoid the need to divide the House is that if this amendment were carried because the Government could not meet my modest points and they lost the vote, they would be tempted to characterise, if not caricature, what people like me were arguing; namely, that this is all about people not wanting to be sent to Newport, rather like people in Moscow after the revolution in 1826 not wanting to be sent to Siberia. I have some numbers: Kursk was not two hours from Moscow: until recently, it was two weeks and before that it was two months. Wearing my TUC liaison hat for a moment, I assure the House that our three affiliates—the FDA, the First Division Association of senior civil servants; Prospect, the professional civil servants union; and PCS, the largest Civil Service union—are not centring on that point and the amendment, of which of course they have knowledge, makes that absolutely clear. Perhaps I may summarise Amendment No. 24, which states: "““The Board may locate its statistical activities in any place within the United Kingdom which it thinks necessary or expedient for the exercise of its functions””." The reasons it might have in mind are to do with recruitment and retention, "““effective contacts with users of statistics, in particular within central government””," and, "““maintain the influence of official statistics on policy””." Perhaps my noble friend will comment on whether there is anything with which he disagrees on those points. The amendment can be characterised more fairly as simply codifying common sense. The ONS Relocation Business Case, a year ago, analysed what are objectively quite obvious pros and cons in all the scenarios ranging from, more or less, a 100 per cent move to something far less than that. It includes consideration of the geographical dimension and separation, along with the opposite argument that computers now make geography totally irrelevant. Just to remind ourselves of the scenarios that the ONS Relocation Business Case looked at, Option A states: "““Maintain London workforce at 2008 reduced level to around 300 staff””." Option B states: "““Reduce workforce based in London to around 100 key staff””." Option C states: "““Maintain minimal presence in London with a ‘consular’ type of office presence””." A further option states: "““Accelerate the plan: complete all relocation activity by 2008””," and, "““Meet the target plan: complete all relocation activity by 2010””." As I understand it, there are 1,200 staff in Newport and 600 left in London. Perhaps my noble friend will correct me if those numbers are wrong. Since our very interesting debate early in May, there has been an important interchange in the Financial Times where people have given different points of view. Karen Dunnell, director of ONS, has given evidence to the Treasury Select Committee and has written an article in the Financial Times in answer to some earlier briefing. Incidentally, that briefing included on-the-record expressions of concern from the Bank of England, to which I shall come back. Among other things, Karen Dunnell said: "““We have timetabled the moves to allow the most time to relocate areas that contain more specialist expertise. So, for example, national accounts staff are likely to form the majority of London-based staff in 2010””." I could say rather pedantically that that is the same as saying, ““There are only 10 left in London, and six of them deal with the national accounts””. One has to be clear about the time-scale here, although I am sure that Karen Dunnell would not have written those words without a bit of steering from the Treasury, given that at present the ONS is obviously under its thumb. You would not think that there was a Statistics Commission expressing any views about these matters at all. Given the cul-de-sac the Government found themselves going down in May, some of us have had contact not only with the trade unions, but also with my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham, whom I applaud for the courtesy he has shown. I have also been holding further talks with the First Division Association and others, and I hope and believe that there has been some movement. I now wish to summarise where I think we are and ask my noble friend to confirm my understanding. I have before me a table given to the unions last week. It is in the public domain, I checked that, and shows two pieces of arithmetic that are worth quoting. On the last occasion, I talked about the central importance in Whitehall of the national income statistics produced by the National Accounts Group. The numbers now given to the unions show that London posts in April 2008 will be 118 staff in the group; London to Newport 2008-09, 35; and London to Newport 2009-10, 16. If you add 35 and 16, it comes to 51, which when subtracted from 118 will mean 67 staff left in London. So the question is: is that it in 2010, or will there still be an escalator going down? I think that the Government are now saying that that is it, in the sense that there is certainly no escalator. For different reasons, we could look at another set of statistics for the total picture, but given that the House may have a limited capacity to digest statistics, perhaps I should concentrate on the National Accounts Group. Can my noble friend assure me that the earlier picture which everyone was led to believe reflected the Government’s real intention and understanding of only a small consular rump left in London remains in place and confirm that the 65 staff do not have an automatic guillotine hanging over their heads? That leads to the overlapping but longer-term question of how far the new board will simply continue under the thumb of the Treasury. I am aware that this has been debated in the Cabinet Office, but the main point is that the Treasury cannot go on having its cake and eating it. It always controls resources directly. The problem is not just the overall control of resources, but also the contradiction that this relates to two even more important questions: the perception and actuality of the independence of the board, and the credibility to other people. I shall mention the Bank of England again in a minute. Does the Treasury want the ONS and the board to have a reputation for independence or not? Yes or no? I think that is a fair way of putting my finger onthe question. If it does, the best thing it can do is find a good psychoanalyst and ask them to look atthis rather advanced case of schizophrenia. After all, the Statistics Commission is not doing anything like the job the Government say they want the board to do. It is going to be difficult enough for the board to engender a reputation for independence. The least my noble friend can honourably do is not to say that the board will merely be able to ““make representations”” to the Treasury, because that does not help us; it means that the Treasury controls everything, although it is rather desperate that the board should have a reputation for independence. It cannot have this both ways. Rather, he needs to say that the board has responsibility for all these manpower questions, and if it has doubts about the resources to be able to do the job it is statutorily required to do, it ought to resign, because that is its own responsibility. Without going into the question of responsibility to the Cabinet Office, and I shall not go so far as to say that that is a red herring, I think the central issue is—