My Lords, I suppose a lot of these questions stem from the 2007 Act and the establishment of the Statistics Board as a non-ministerial department that operates under the name of the UK Statistics Authority. The issue then was, and now is: what stats do we rely on? What has public confidence and what has public policy confidence? Of course, the authority is meant to do that job and draw from a number of sources, not least the bodies that are listed. Apart from the government departments, it can add other bodies to it, which raises the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, mentioned. The official statistics from the five new bodies that have been added to the list must be accurate, credible and reliable.
The question for the Minister is: what sort of additional support will be given to the bodies concerned to ensure that they are able to meet the standards required? The Equality and Human Rights Commission is one of the bodies that is being added. I am certainly aware of how much its resources have been reduced recently; its ability to conduct a range of statutory work has been curtailed because of the lack of resources. Is it solely up to the UK Statistics Authority to do that monitoring and evaluation? It must have felt confident to recommend that the Equality and Human Rights Commission be added to the list. The question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, was important: how is that decision made and how do we maintain public confidence in official statistics by the mechanism established in the 2007 Act?
The 2007 Act was designed to have an independent stats authority that can challenge the use of statistics where necessary. If the bodies are receiving government grants or are in any way overreliant on the Government—particularly the five that are being added to the list—will that reduce their capability to challenge the Government where necessary? I suspect that there is always the temptation for Governments of whatever colour to use the principle that he who pays the piper calls the tune. We need to see just what mechanism is involved. Can the Minister assure us that the independence and credibility of these bodies will be properly maintained? That is the main focus of my concern. I would certainly welcome any briefing, but the 2007 Act is a useful starting point to look at the issues that my noble friend raised.