Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 25: 25: Before Clause 27, insert the following new Clause— ““Access to the Prime Minister The National Statistician shall have right of direct access to the Prime Minister on any matter involving the integrity of official statistics or a dispute with a government department regarding official statistics.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, Amendment No. 25 inserts a new clause before Clause 27, which grants to the National Statistician the right of direct access to the Prime Minister. We would not normally expect to see such a clause in a Bill, because access to the Prime Minister is more an issue of custom and practice than a matter of statute. We tabled the amendment for Report following an unsatisfactory debate on similar amendments in Committee. We firmly believe that the work of the National Statistician in achieving high standards for statistics across the whole of the Government will be aided by the informal pressures that can be brought to bear behind the scenes. The mere fact that the National Statistician can have access to the Prime Minister adds cards to her hand in dealing with other government departments, and it may be the single most important weapon available to her. I understand that it was the case when the noble Lord, Lord Moser, was National Statistician that he had access to the Prime Minister. When we had our debate in Committee, we did not have the direct wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Moser, who was not in his place. I expect that he has seen from Hansard that several of us prayed in aid our understanding of what happened in his day, and I hope that we accurately reported him. Something seems to have changed since the noble Lord’s day and, according to the Minister, access to the Prime Minister now needs to be negotiated through the Cabinet Secretary. That opens up the possibility that the Cabinet Secretary might, for whatever reason, deny or hinder access. That would not be satisfactory, not least because the Cabinet Secretary may be drawn into the substance of whether the National Statistician’s case was better than that of the potentially offending departments. My amendment merely reinstates the former practice and has the advantage of emphasising the personal role of the National Statistician within Whitehall. We debated earlier the muddle of roles and we do not think that that has been fully resolved by the amendments we have now passed; but we wanted to be clear that the National Statistician, not the chairman of the board, is to lead on the issue of statistical standards and practices in government departments. I beg to move