Statistics and Registration Service Bill

First, I thank all those hon. Members who generously welcomed me to the Front Bench. It is always nice to be appointed to the Front Bench, and a little thrill runs down the spine when realising that one is first up on Monday afternoon. It gave me an interesting weekend of reading all the debates that hon. Members held in Committee and in the other place on the important provisions that we are discussing. The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) said that he would not oppose the Government amendments and that he welcomed the agreement in principle, which, again, is generous. He asked about the implications of the transfer. I agree with the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), who said that we are considering a reasonably finely balanced issue, which the Treasury Sub-Committee examined and about which it came down originally on the side of Treasury. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) referred to the moment in the late 1980s when the Conservative Government switched the then Central Statistical Office to the Treasury in the first place. The House has therefore considered many such issues in the past. The hon. Lady also said that determining which Department—the Treasury or the Cabinet Office—should be responsible was a fine judgment. Clearly, the Government share that view. In reply to the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire, I do not believe that accepting the amendments means conceding the existence of a powerful conflict of interest in the residual ministerial responsibilities for the statistics board resting with the Treasury rather than the Cabinet Office. The most important aspect is that the Bill, the main objectives of which have been widely welcomed, creates an independent statistics board, which can then distance statistics from any perception of interference for political reasons. I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not believe that, because the Government have made the concession, they are somehow admitting that Treasury officials are venal and want conflicts of interest, or that the Treasury cannot be entrusted with statistics. That cannot be said of any Department or any Ministers, from whatever party they happen to be. My experience of ministerial office is that statistics are the last thing that we think about because we are too buried in other matters to interfere directly in the way in which a series of statistics are chosen, or when they are compiled and released. Clearly, under the new arrangements, regardless of where residual ministerial responsibilities lie, the new statistics board will perform those duties. The hon. Gentleman also asked whether the Treasury would have less of a role in co-ordinating Departments. Removing residual ministerial responsibilities for statistics, which is quite narrow, will not have a bearing on the relative powers of a finance Ministry in any Government. I suspect that that will stay the same and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will be doing his best to ensure, particularly as the spending review proceeds, that that remains the case. On the third issue, the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire asked about board appointments and whether there might be a role for Parliament. Clearly, Parliament will not have an added role and not in respect of the initial board appointments. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the national statistician is a Crown appointment and board appointments will be made by appropriate Ministers—ahead, I believe, of the setting up and going live of the new board in April 2008. A proper appointments process has to be in place for that. It may then be for Parliament to decide—after the non-ministerial department has been established and is up and running—how it wishes to ensure adequate scrutiny of the new department’s activities. I know from looking at Hansard that there were some interesting debates in both Houses and in Committee about how Parliament might most usefully discharge that duty. That, of course, is a matter for this House rather than for the Government to decide. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) was generous in his welcome, for which I thank him. He was supportive in principle, as were the spokesmen for the other two parties. With that, I hope that the House will accept the amendments. Lords amendment disagreed to. Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 9 disagreed to.