Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I wish to speak on this group as it seems the only opportunity to raise an issue that I have consistently raised during the passage of the Bill, which is on what basis does public confidence in our statistical service rest? Many Opposition Members who have spoken have suggested that public confidence in our statistical service depends on the way in which statistics are handled by politicians, the pre-release arrangements and so on. That issue is dealt with by this group of amendments. However, I urge the Minister—whom I am glad to see on the Front Bench—to recognise that public confidence is based most strongly on the accuracy of our statistics. I am profoundly concerned that none of the debates on the Bill has focused sufficiently on creating a legal framework that guarantees accuracy. The sets of estimates, which might or might not be pre-released—on which this group of amendments is mostly closely focused—and which the Office for National Statistics issues in between censuses, are in many cases profoundly unreliable. The best way to shake public confidence in our statistical service is by producing wrong statistics. The higher education participation rate is not calculated using ONS statistics because of its flawed estimates about the shape of the class structure of our society. The grants to local authorities, however, are issued on the basis of those flawed statistics. Members will have heard me describe how my constituency of Slough has been damaged, for example, by the fact that in the 2001 census many migrants to the town did not identify their former address, although it was overseas, and by the smoothing arrangements in the estimation that give towns such as Windsor and Wokingham the same kind of balance of migrants as Slough. I am at risk of straying from the issue with which this group of amendments is concerned. However, I urge the Minister, in her new responsibilities, to ensure that the legal framework for delivery of our statistical services guarantees not only their independence but their accuracy at every stage. If we do not make sure that they are accurate, we will not have public confidence in our statistics.