Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved, as an amendment to Motion B, leave out from ““House”” to end, and insert ““do insist on its Amendments Nos. 10 and 14””. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, Amendment No. 10 inserted a requirement for the board to monitor the arrangements for the release and pre-release of statistics. The reason for disagreement given by the other place is that, "““the Statistics Board can in any event monitor the arrangements for … release””," and pre-release. We accept that under the Bill the board could look at the mechanics of publication but we are not sure that it is crystal clear that it should look at all aspects of how statistics are released, including, for example, their separation from governmental and ministerial comment. The board can produce a report at any time in relation to its functions; that is provided for in Clause 26. We need to ensure that it is clear and unambiguous that monitoring release and pre-release are part of the board’s functions. Release and pre-release, which we will consider in Motion C, have given rise to grave concern. We debated that at length during our consideration of the Bill. That has contributed to the lack of trust in statistics that now undoubtedly exists. We believe that Amendment No. 10 should stand precisely because our—and, we hope, the Government’s—ambition is to rebuild public trust. That means that the locus of the board in the areas that have gone wrong in the past must be clear. Amendment No. 14 ensures that, when the board draws up its code of practice for statistics, it must cover the rules and principles for release. The reason given for disagreement is that it is for the Statistics Board to decide what is in the code. The Minister said that he expected that the code would cover release arrangements, but the Bill does not say so. The arrangements for release are so important that they must be included in the code. This morning I received from the Minister a letter dated last Friday, setting out the Government’s proposals for the new statistics hub. He referred to that letter earlier. I thank him for it, but I suggest that a letter sent only in hard copy on a non-sitting day is not designed to give noble Lords much notice of its contents. Fortunately, my colleagues in another place had already given me a copy of a virtually identical letter from the Secretary to the Treasury, released three days earlier. This letter sets out, as the noble Lord explained, the detailed arrangements for the hub, through which some statistics will be released. It is clear that in the Government’s mind the hub will apply only to that subset of official statistics that are designated national statistics. It will not apply to the devolved Administrations, even where national statistics are involved, and, what is more, the rules will usually—not invariably—be mandatory for Whitehall departments. I think that we agree with the Government that the board should set the rules on release but we believe that they should go wider than is envisaged for the hub, and we hope that the board will not feel intimidated by this paper into allowing extensive opt-outs. Even if the board has set the rules in the code, that does not mean that they will be followed. As we debated on Report, there is only a weak duty to comply, and that applies to statistics which have been designated national statistics. That duty carries no legal consequences, and the penalty for non-compliance may be no more than the loss of status as national statistics and the possible use of the public disagreement provisions in Clause 15. But at least we shall ensure that the board sets the rules and that they are designed for all statistics and not just non-devolved, national ones. On the next Motion we shall come to the important area of pre-release, where these arguments have much more force, but we continue to believe that the board’s role in relation to the release arrangements should be in the Bill to ensure that it is clear and unambiguous. I beg to move. Moved, as an amendment to Motion B, leave out from ““House”” to end, and insert ““do insist on its Amendments Nos. 10 and 14””.—(Baroness Noakes.)