Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 36: 36: Clause 7, page 4, line 23, at end insert ““at national and local levels”” The noble Lord said: This is the third of my amendments, and noble Lords will be glad to know that it is the last for today. I am raising the flag for local authorities and the regions of England in terms of their need for information. I referred in my previous remarks to my period as a regional director, when I served the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, in Newcastle. Those two years were the best in my Civil Service career, because I was let loose from Whitehall to go out and do something. The experience of being on the receiving end of Whitehall counterbalanced that joy, because there was so much frustration. Very competent civil servants were playing the national game, which was not the game that I was playing in the north of England—or in Manchester, or in Bristol. It was not quite the same. It was difficult to get an understanding at national level of how different it could be when one was looking at the specific and very different needs of different parts of the country. What made sense nationally did not necessarily fit with what was needed at the regional or at the local authority level. The amendment relates to the definition of the objectives of the board and the definition of public interest. Clause 7(2)(b) refers to, "““assisting in the development and evaluation of public policy””," to which I add, "““at national and local levels””." If I had drafted it better, it would say, ““at national, regional and local level””. I want to get across the fact that there is a very real need. Let me illustrate that in a little more detail than I did earlier. In February, the Office for National Statistics made it known that some much needed data sets that included gross value added by industrial sectors were being withdrawn without consultation because other things had a higher priority. These data sets mattered for the development of effective local and regional social and economic policy, but at national level the priorities were seen differently. I want a balance. Of course we must have a national view, but I want those responsible for defining the public interest to understand that it needs to be looked at in national, regional and local terms. That should be written into their terms of reference. I very much hope that the Minister will accept from a regionalist that this Bill looks like it is drafted as I would have drafted it as a Whitehall man. If I had been drafting it in Newcastle, Manchester or Bristol, that point would have been picked up right away. I hope that the Minister can respond as sympathetically as he did to my earlier amendments, although, while I appreciated what he had to say, I might well come back on them. I beg to move.