Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, has an enviable reputation for concealing his retreat under a remarkable torrent of verbiage. It is clear that he has answered my third question, which was that other bodies, "““would be free to use the code as a guide””." That meets the substance of my point. I hope that that will be drawn to the attention of those who have expressed concerns. The words that he used last week had a very different purport. That may be what he intended to say, but it is not what any of us, or any of those with whom I have been in touch, understood him to say. The noble Lord has now made it very clear that others are free to use the code as a guide and that the code might be, as he said, an exemplar to others. It was never intended to apply to others outside, which is why none of them were consulted. But that was not their reaction when they saw what he had said last week. I quoted some of the responses that I received. My only other point takes up that made by my noble friend on the Front Bench. Surely national statistics are a subset of the wider range of official statistics; they are not something separate. As the Minister has explained, within the whole range of official statistics are those that qualify to be called national statistics. So I am not sure that I buy entirely his argument that the use of the term ““official statistics”” would be inappropriate. However, I do not want to prolong the debate. I think that the noble Lord has retreated and has given the undertakingthat I was looking for: that the code is a code forthe official statistics and that others may use it as a guide. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 11 [Assessment]: [Amendment No. 2 not moved.] Clause 12 [Duty to continue to comply with Code]: [Amendment No. 3 not moved.] Clause 13 [Re-assessment]: [Amendment No. 4 not moved.] Clause 15 [Requests for assessment: supplementary]: [Amendment No. 5 not moved.] Clause 30 [National Statistician: executive functions]: [Amendment No. 6 not moved.] Clause 35 [Delegation]: [Amendment No. 7 not moved.]