Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I will deal with this point a little later. I have seen the correspondence that passed between my predecessor and members of the Standing Committee which set out in general the approach that he expected the statutory instrument to take. There is not a draft of it available at the moment, but he has tried to be open about how the system will work. I shall come back to this point shortly, because I want to deal with it logically, but I hope that the hon. Lady will be pleased by what she hears when I get to that point. Putting new, tighter pre-release arrangements in secondary legislation, rather than in the non-statutory code, would result in a more enforceable, transparent system than the one that operates at present. The board will have a statutory duty to assess compliance with the pre-release arrangements and will be able to remove National Statistics accreditation from any product that it considers not to be in compliance with those arrangements. This amounts to a powerful and public naming and shaming mechanism that has not existed in the past. It will bring more transparency and enforceability to the pre-release arrangements than ever before. It is not only the board that will be in a position to judge whether the arrangements are being complied with. The arrangements will ensure an important role for Parliament in scrutinising and holding to account all participants in the statistical system. This includes determining whether and how the new pre-release arrangements have been complied with, and how effectively the board has exercised its assessment function. Parliament will also have an important role to play in determining whether the new pre-release rules contained in the secondary legislation will damage, or have damaged, the credibility of the broader statistical system. For that reason, I am announcing today that the Government will consult publicly on the draft secondary legislation before putting it to the House. I hope that that answers the hon. Lady’s question, and that we will be able to have a positive consultation process ahead of the statutory instrument being laid. Following the undertaking by my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth on Second Reading that we would review the operation of the new pre-release arrangements after 12 months, including assessing whether they were hindering our broader objective of building trust in the statistical system, I believe that this is a welcome arrangement that should reassure those who doubt whether the Government are absolutely committed to ensuring the objectivity and independence of statistics. This reflects the fact that we recognise that the terms of pre-release access have been criticised in the past. Indeed, Opposition Members here and in the other place have been quick to remind us of that in our debates.