Statistics and Registration Service Bill

On 13 March, at column 217, the then Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), said about pre-release arrangements:"““The public have a right to expect, and the British media have come to demand, that Government Ministers account for the impact and implications of policy when statistics are released—not hours afterwards or in the days that follow.””—[Official Report, 13 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 217.]" I happen to agree entirely. But the simple fact that a Minister or Department is obliged to comment quickly after the release of a statistical series does not and should never entitle them to access to it for some hours—or almost two days—in advance. I shall speak briefly, but I hope that I can get to the nub of the issue. To paraphrase the new Minister, she said early in her contribution that because Ministers have to deal with the consequences of the publication of data, or perhaps provide mitigation if something happens, that makes them the people best placed to set the time scales. Nothing could be further from the truth. It may suit them to set the time scales, because, as the previous Financial Secretary said, they will have to respond quickly, so they need a lot of time to work out what they will say, but that is completely back to front. It might suit them if they are going to spin a narrow part of the statistics that look beneficial and can cover a multitude of sins elsewhere in the small print of a document. It might suit them if they want to discount the bad news early, knowing that another announcement is to come the following day or the day after that will cover it up. But if the Minister is serious about transparency and if she and the Department are serious about removing perceptions of spin and cover-up, I have yet to hear an argument today as to why the Government will not hand over the responsibility for the code and the creation of time scales to the national statistician or the independent board. The Minister in her opening remarks said that there was broad agreement on both sides of the House that, in the case of market sensitive data, there was general agreement that there should be proper pre-release. That is right and proper. But for the normal publication of normal social statistics on non-market sensitive economic data, if the Government are serious about transparency, there is no longer any justification for the Government to keep even 40.5 hours of pre-release access to themselves. Therefore, I ask them to look at the matter. I know that the Minister is new, and I am sure that she has been studying the previous debates in Hansard and reading through briefings by the ton, but this is, as she said earlier, the main point of contention in the Bill. Why do we not go collectively, in the big tent consensual politics, with a new progressive consensus, forward together—and other catch phrases that I cannot quite remember—to deliver the transparency that the House wants, including, I am sure, many Labour Back Benchers, and that the people expect and the users of statistics demand to remove the perception of fiddling, unnecessary spin and discounting of bad news when statistics are published?