My Lords, I thank the Minister for such a clear explanation, even if he did not manage to make it sound zippy or a lot of fun. It is an important and non-contentious draft order to which we are happy to give our support. Indeed, we welcome the additions to the schedule of organisations providing official statistics; the more, the better, and especially the better-monitored statistics we have, the better for all of us—the public, the press and politicians—so that we can judge the performance of the Government.
The system that has evolved in this country, particularly the requirement that has been mentioned to abide by a code, in how statistics are kept and how and when they are published, is one that we applaud. As mentioned, the UK Statistics Authority, an independent authority, has the statutory objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and the publication of official statistics.
That is a key part of the system although of course it depends on all of the organisations on that schedule and particularly the Government abiding by the code.
The Minister described UKSA’s objective of serving the public good so as to mobilise the power of data to improve decision-making. That accountability includes:
“Informing the public about social and environmental matters, assisting in the development and evaluation of public policy”,
and,
“regulating quality and publicly challenging the misuse of statistics”.
This latter task of monitoring, and in particular when necessary challenging, the use of statistics is particularly important when we see the Government sometimes being a little too free and easy over their handling of data.
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In February, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, found that the comparison made by Mrs May during PMQs between waiting times figures for accident and emergency between England and Wales was not valid, leading to the Prime Minister having to correct the Hansard record. However, she is not alone in being found wanting in her use of statistics. Sir David also had to write to the Foreign Secretary expressing his surprise and disappointment that Mr Johnson continued to repeat the infamous £350 million figure which confuses gross and net contributions. In his words, Sir David judged this, rather seriously I thought, to be,
“a clear misuse of official statistics”.
It is not just the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary who have transgressed. The then Home Secretary received one of these letters over the disclosure of Home Office migration statistics to members of the media ahead of their official publication. Not only was the main leak made to the Daily Telegraph, but whoever briefed the journalist only half understood the data or inadequately communicated it, thus seriously misleading the public. Mind you, even a more accurate leak would still have been misleading because it was partial and lacking in context. As Sir David wrote, the leak was,
“more damaging in view of the sensitivity of migration data”.
I have cited these examples obviously not to chide the Government but to champion the system. It has an independent scrutineer and a voice to challenge the misuse of data in its collection and interpretation, as well as in its publication by any of the bodies set out in the schedule, including from now the four new ones. I wish those four new bodies well in maintaining the high standards that we expect from any public body, but I hope that they never have to receive one of those letters from Sir David. We hope that the order is duly agreed.