Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I know from some of my reading over the weekend that we have had a debate similar to those during the Bill’s earlier stages. No one should deny the good intent of those on either side of the argument to have greater transparency and consistency across Departments in the way in which pre-release is dealt with. The system that the Government seek to put in place, with the alignment of pre-release times to 40.5 hours across market and non-market statistics, and down from five days in some cases, is an advance in consistency and a tightening up of the rules. Hon. Members on both sides of the argument should not deny that the Government’s intention in some of the changes that have been outlined during the Bill’s passage by my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey) was to standardise, tighten and reassure the House on these matters. There is a broad acceptance of the principle—accepted in a variety of instances, some narrower for Opposition Members than perhaps for others—that in some circumstances at least pre-release should happen, which obviously I welcome. There is also an acceptance that a reasonable number of hours should be allowed, but no agreement on the number of hours. The Government have reduced that to 40.5 hours, but there are various opinions ranging from that of the Treasury Committee at three hours, to that of members of the other House at one hour or 30 minutes, and a range in between—from 40.5 all the way down to zero. In this debate, we see two different ways of achieving a system that will tighten and standardise the requirements and methodology of pre-release. On the one hand, the Government have said that they will introduce the system in the form of an affirmative statutory instrument, which will be debated upstairs and which therefore will have the imprimatur of Parliament, rather than by a code of practice that the board can produce, which Opposition Members have suggested is a better way forward. Given the wide welcome that we have for the basic approaches in the Bill to making statistics more independent, this is really the only matter that has raised people’s blood pressure. Reading the controversies that have raged throughout the Bill’s passage, I am not sure that the Government have been given the proper credit for the improvements that they have suggested in their methodology for creating a system for pre-release. First, we have the affirmative resolution procedure; secondly, my predecessor has already said that the matter will be reviewed after 12 months to see whether change is needed; and today, I have undertaken to issue the statutory instrument in draft form for consultation, which again allows the structure of the system to be debated.