Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I simply wish to acknowledge that this is an important area of debate and that the basic differences between the Government on the one hand and Opposition Members and the statistical community on the other have largely been reconciled. I accept that considerable progress has been made, and the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), who was formerly the Minister with responsibility for the Bill, contributed substantially to that. There are essentially two overlapping issues. The first is whether it is useful to distinguish between official and national statistics. The purist’s view is that one should not distinguish between them as they are equally important—or rather, they are in a continuum of importance—and it is not helpful to make an arbitrary distinction. In our exchanges in the House, we accepted that there is a rough hierarchy and that some statistics are important and merit being described as national while others are less important—indeed we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of statistics. I certainly accepted the distinction itself as conceptually sensible. The key issue was whether Ministers should have a responsibility for deciding what statistics fall into what category. Concern was expressed in the House and by the Opposition in the other place that if there were not proper safeguards in place through the code, official statistics would be misused by Ministers. My understanding is that that difficulty has been overcome and that, through the board, all statistics will be subject to the proper discipline of the code. That has largely met our concerns. A subsidiary issue—it may just be a misunderstanding, and it may just have arisen from bad drafting—was briefly alluded to by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers): inadvertently, the Bill now covers large areas of statistical information that are not the product of Government at all. One of the examples mentioned in the other place is particularly close to my heart because I used to work in the oil industry. One of the main tasks of my opposite number, the chief economist of BP, was to produce the set of oil statistics that are the gold plate for the industry, and that are accepted as the best source of oil and gas information in the world. The question has been asked whether those statistics will be subject to the legislation. After all, they are produced voluntarily to enhance the reputation of that company, and are not in any sense a requirement so it would be odd if they were subject to the legislation. However, since the question has been asked, it would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether such privately generated statistics, which are immensely useful but neither official nor national, are in some sense covered by the Bill, whether inadvertently or intentionally. The purpose of my intervention is simply to accept that as a result of a sensible exchange in debate, the key point of the Opposition parties has been conceded.