Statistics and Registration Service Bill

We have finally reached Third Reading. There was a point when we wondered when Report stage would ever appear on the agenda, but eventually it did, after several weeks. From the lack of attendance for part of the debate today, it seems that much of the House thought that it had not yet arrived. The scrutiny process has indeed been useful. We would like to have seen many further changes to the Bill, and we hope that the debate will continue in a lively fashion in the other place. We will not vote against the Bill tonight because we agree with significant aspects of it. We welcome the reduction in ministerial influence over the statistical services; the establishment of an independent board to oversee Government statistics; the new code of practice; the fact that the reforms will apply across the whole of the UK, including the devolved Administrations; and the extension of employment rights to registrars. We have long called for politics and spin to be taken out of official statistics, which is vital important if people are to trust them. It is also vital to secure this goal if we are to entrench economic stability in our economy. Like a doctor taking the temperature of her patient, any Chancellor desperately needs to know the unvarnished facts about the state of the economy. No Chancellor should ever make the mistake of believing his own propaganda. However, although the Bill goes in the right direction, towards the calls made by Conservative Members for independent statistics, it is too timid to achieve the crucial goal of ensuring that official statistics are, from now on, free from political interference. The Bill should be all about letting go. It lets go of certain functions and passes them to independent institutions. However, if the Government want real economic reform, they should prise away from Ministers the powers over statistics to which the Bill allows them to cling—the power to keep statistics out of the scope of the code of conduct, the power to determine the budget for statistical services, and the power to determine pre-release rules. Let me take a canter through some of the issues of interest and controversy that we have discussed over the past few weeks of scrutiny. We have acknowledged the importance of using administrative data for statistical purposes. I am delighted that that is confirmed in the Bill. There is consensus that such data can be a rich source of information for statisticians and can cut costs for Government and for business because of the reduced number of surveys that will be needed if administrative data can be relied on. Throughout the scrutiny process, however, we have sought assurances from Government on the confidentiality of administrative information. As we have made plain, we would strongly resist any attempts to divert census or other administrative data into the forthcoming national identity database, and we urge Parliament to continue to monitor the use of personal data for statistical purposes with great care too see how the arrangements operate in practice. As well as the self-evident privacy concerns that we have discussed, and to which my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) referred, we must also recognise that any failure to safeguard confidentiality would also threaten statistical projects if it deterred people from disclosing sensitive information. We have debated extensively the institutional structures proposed in the Bill. The Opposition remain concerned that the proposal to merge the functions carried out by the ONS and the Statistics Commission represents a step backwards in our progress towards a better and more impartial statistical system. We are concerned about the loss of the independent watchdog. Moreover, granting to the successor to the commission responsibility for the production of statistics will damage its credibility in providing impartial scrutiny of the statistical system. It is also a matter of regret that the Minister has resisted calls for the Bill to enhance and strengthen the status of the National Statistician, which is a key part of a successful and independent statistical system. Only if she is viewed as the leader of the Government statistical service, with real clout to promote excellence and best practice right across the system, including within Departments, will this reform achieve the goals that the Government have set for it. Only then will she be able to provide the professional backing to enable statisticians to resist pressure from Departments to slip below the highest standards of integrity and impartiality. Only if she has the power to push for co-ordination and consistency will this reform address and mitigate some of the inherent drawbacks of our decentralised system and help to deal with the fragmentation problems that, as the Minister acknowledged, have existed in relation to data following the devolution process. Perhaps the most significant weakness in the Bill is the fact that it effectively gives Ministers the right to decide whether the new code of practice and the full rigour of the reforms will apply to their departmental statistics. If they choose, they can keep the board away from important indicators and figures on public services. It is not sufficient for the Minister merely to say that he expects the board to promote the code as a model of good practice for all Departments, since he is giving it inadequate tools to ensure that those Departments are brought into line if they fall below the standards required by the code. The Bill would have been greatly strengthened had Ministers’ power over funding the board also been removed or constrained. Every Member of the House knows that the person who sets the budget or writes the cheque has significant power in any organisation. Under the present Chancellor, more than any other, the Treasury has cast an ever-lengthening shadow over a vast range of Government activities. Any Minister will be familiar with bruising battles over funding. Yet, under the Bill, the statistics board will have no Minister outside the Treasury to fight its corner for a share of resources. Earlier, we were told that, being internal to the Treasury, the board was likely to get a better deal. I am not sure that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs would agree with that, given the settlements that it has received recently. The Gershon process also seems to indicate that those departments directly linked to the Treasury do not get a special deal or more favourable or generous treatment. The Minister has promised us that the new independent framework would cover financial arrangements but has failed to tell us how that process would work. He has promised us a transparent formula for funding but so far has failed to be at all transparent about it. The longer he spoke on that in Committee, the more concerned the Opposition became. The Bill gives Parliament no role in relation to funding beyond ordinary methods of scrutiny. The Opposition believe that Parliament should call the shots on funding. Putting the budget in the hands of a Joint Committee of both Houses would provide the expertise, gravitas and impartiality to ensure that the funding process could never be politicised by Ministers. In that way, we could have imported some admirable qualities from the structure that governs the National Audit Office. The Minister spoke repeatedly, with warmth and enthusiasm, about the importance of parliamentary scrutiny, and yet Parliament’s role in relation to the statistical service under the Bill seems no stronger than it is in relation to any ordinary department. It is a matter of regret that the Government have rejected a structure that would have put Parliament in the driving seat in relation to the statistical system and its funding arrangements. Pre-release is emblematic of so many of the defects in our current system. Our current rules give pre-release access to more statistics, to more people and for longer periods than any other country in the developed world. They give Ministers far too much scope to use early access to statistical information to manage the news agenda and discount bad news in advance. That kind of activity can do so much to undermine trust in official statistics. In that area, the Government’s reforms in 2000 probably made the situation worse by reinforcing ministerial control over pre-release rules and reducing the constraint that the head of the government statistical service had previously been able to place on pre-release access. We have acknowledged the case for limited pre-release access to data. If the reform is to succeed, however, we believe that pre-release rules should be tightened. Even more importantly, we believe that the board should have the final say over what those rules should be. Sadly, sympathetic as he might be, the Minister no doubt has his hands tied by Ministers in other Departments who are anxious to maintain the political advantages that the current system gives them. Rather than entrenching ministerial control on pre-release rules into statute as the Bill proposes, we should trust the board to get the decision right on that. Neither I nor the Minister should make that decision; neither of us is truly disinterested. If the Government really want to let go of statistics, painful as that is, they should let go of pre-release as well—not to see it abandoned, but to let the board decide what the rules on pre-release should be. Today, we are making progress towards the independence for statistical services that the Opposition would like, but not enough. Today could have been an historic day for economic governance in the UK—but it will not be. It could have been the day when we set the statisticians free of political interference and took the spin out of statistics for good—but it will not be. The Minister has steadfastly resisted our calls to make that final jump, that final break with a discreditable past and the manipulation and dissembling that has become such a notorious hallmark of this Government. It would take an act of political courage—not to say political irony—for the Government who have elevated news management to the level of a political creed to be responsible for entrenching impartiality, objectivity and honesty into all official statistics. Sadly, the Minister will not, or cannot, take that step. The Government cannot quite let go. If the Government will not listen to us and will not listen to the hundreds of concerned experts and stakeholder groups, I hope that they will be forced to listen to a message loud and clear from the other place—that their reforms are welcome and go in the right direction, but that they are not sufficient and must be significantly strengthened before the British public can again place their trust and confidence in official statistics.