Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, it is not often that a Bill finds such widespread support on all sides of the House, at least for the intentions behind it. I join in encouraging the Government in their introduction of legislation to address the serious issue of the erosion of public trust in government statistics. However, the Bill does not go far enough. It gives us a singular opportunity to devise a robust framework for the delivery and oversight of national statistics. It is highly unlikely that parliamentary time will be found to revisit the issue in the near future, so it is incumbent on us to get it right this first time. It would be tempting to classify the debate as a technical discussion of an esoteric subject. In some respects, this may be the case, but the Bill deals with the governance and oversight structures of statistics of national importance in assessing the performance of the Administration, in informing budgetary decisions involving billions of pounds, and in informing the capital markets. It is therefore vital that the production of national statistics is, and is seen to be, independent of the Administration whose performance they are used to assess. It is quite clear that the general public now see government information and statistics in the context of spin. Perhaps the moving of the Chancellor’s ““golden rule”” goalposts is a good example of selective redefinition that is expedient to the Government. Most have been supportive of the work and quality of the Office for National Statistics, and rightly so. The criticisms have largely been levelled at ministerial interference; but there have been some instances in which the ONS has been accused, correctly or incorrectly, of bowing to government pressure. One example was the classification of Network Rail’s debt. Network Rail has no shareholders, and its inception was preceded by the Government’s hugely controversial decision to force its predecessor, which was listed as a plc company, out of business. Network Rail is fully backed by Government, who provide a de facto guarantee of its debt. Yet according to the then National Statistician, Network Rail was considered to be a private company. This decision, which was both convenient to the Treasury and very difficult to justify, is exactly the sort of situation in which demonstrable independence would have been of tremendous value to the ONS itself. The Government have the opportunity to make an historic move akin to granting independence to the Monetary Policy Committee. The degree to which Ministers mean what they say in support of independence will be measured and tested by their willingness to remove the constraints of ministerial control from the production of statistics. The Bill follows good corporate governance principles in establishing a board comprising a chairman and a majority of non-executive members, along with the National Statistician as chief executive. Thus far, it mirrors accepted best practice in the private sector; but why is it also required to exercise an oversight and regulatory function? As I understand the arrangements—the Minister will no doubt be able to put me right when he winds up the debate—we have moved from a separate oversight authority in the form of the Statistics Commission to one that is integrated with the delivery agency. I cannot see how this would be considered a positive development in the separation of functions and the guaranteeing of independence. Perhaps the Minister will explain that a little further. There will always be a potential conflict in government departments that produce the statistics by which their own performance is measured. Yet we must deal with what is feasible and cost effective, and recognise that this is inevitable. It would not be practical to devise a cumbersome bureaucracy that duplicated the departments’ information-gathering infrastructure for all measures. It must therefore be for the board and not for Ministers to determine which sets of information are deemed to be national statistics. I am sure that amendments will be tabled in this regard at later stages of the Bill. The status of the code of practice should also be enhanced to ensure that the public can have increased confidence in the statistics that fall under the auspices of government departments. I noted with interest the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Moser, on the relative problems of ONS statistics versus those produced by departments themselves. He felt that the former were much more robust in general than the latter. Much has been made of pre-release, which is one of the essential criticisms of how statistics are released: the Government have the upper hand and a story ready to go before anyone else has had a chance to read the fine print. After the Chancellor’s Budget speech, we all know the importance of reading the fine print before reacting. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, said that those who spun official figures were found out quickly; the Chancellor probably got away with about two or three minutes in his recent speech. I have listened to the arguments in favour of pre-release. I accept some of them, particularly, like many noble Lords who have spoken or will speak, as I have been a user of such privileged information in the past. I understand that my noble friend Lady Noakes and her colleagues on the opposition Front Bench believe that decisions on pre-release should be put in the hands of the board. The difficulty is that, essentially, we are talking about a political judgment, not about the quality of the statistics or the type of information. It is about politics, so it may be a little difficult to expect the board to make a political judgment. Perhaps we should look at guidance being written into the Bill, against which the board could make its judgments. However, it should not be left entirely to the board; equally, it should not be left to Ministers either. In recent years, the Government have had a tendency to create a problem, to invent some regulations to deal with it and then to find ways to get around their own regulations. I hope that we are not dealing with such a case in this instance. Despite these reservations, I support the thrust of the Bill and look forward to debating it further at the next stages.