Official Statistics Order 2008

rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Official Statistics Order 2008. The noble Lord said: The order is part of a wider programme of work implementing the Statistics and Registration Service Act, which gained Royal Assent last summer after a thorough and helpful scrutiny process in this House. Before explaining what the order does in detail, I should remind the committee about that Act and the wider statistical reform programme. In line with the wider government agenda of delegating ministerial power to credible, independent institutions with a clear remit set by the Government and Parliament, the primary goal of the reforms is to reinforce the independence, integrity and quality of the statistics produced in government, helping to improve evidence-based policy-making, contributing to better public services and long-term stability in the UK economy and for the wider public good. At the heart of the Statistics and Registration Service Act is the creation of a new independent body, the UK Statistics Authority, which is known in the Act as the Statistics Board, with a statutory responsibility to promote and safeguard the production and publication of UK official statistics that serve the public good. The authority will begin its work fully on 1 April 2008. Two of the Statistics Authority’s main functions are to monitor and report on all official statistics, wherever they are produced, and independently to assess the quality of a core set of key official statistics for formal approval as ““national statistics””. The order relates to the definition of official statistics; the set of statistics that the authority must monitor and report on. Under the Act, all statistics produced by the Statistics Authority, government departments, the devolved Administrations and other Crown bodies are automatically deemed to be official statistics. This means that numerous bodies are automatically under the oversight of the Statistics Authority. However, the Act also allows us to add further statistics by order. This is necessary for bodies that are clearly producers of important statistics but which fall outside the core definition in the Act. That may include, for example, NHS bodies such as the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which produces statistics on, for example, the number of people in the country who are obese. The order that we are proposing today is particularly pressing for those bodies that produce national statistics in the current system, such as the Health and Social Care Information Centre and the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Under the Act, statistics must be official statistics before they can be national statistics. To allow current producers of statistics to continue to produce national statistics at the start of the new system, these statistics must therefore first be specified as official statistics by order. If we do not make this order, these key statistics will no longer have ““national statistic”” status. These statistics will of course need to pass an assessment by the authority to continue as national statistics in the longer term, but we are taking about the immediate future. Not all of the bodies on the list are national statistics producers. We are taking this opportunity to add a number of other bodies as official statistics producers. This may not be a complete list of all future official statistics, however. We want to work further inside government, and with the new Statistics Authority as it establishes itself, in order to ensure that the boundary of the official statistics system is set in the appropriate place. After that work has been done, it is likely—I know that this prospect will be greeted with great enthusiasm by the Committee—that we will bring another order before the Committee to add further bodies to the list in due course. We have, of course, consulted the new Statistics Authority on the order, as required under the Act. The authority was keen to be sure that all current national statistics could continue to be national statistics under the new system, and that we had processes in place to ensure that the eventual scope of official statistics would be as comprehensive as possible. I am glad to say that we have been able to reassure the new authority on both points. In summary, then, the order needs to be made now to ensure that a core set of crucial statistics can continue to be branded as national statistics come the start of the new system. I hope that the Committee will agree that this is necessary and appropriate, and can support the order, which is a necessary part of implementing the vital reforms to the statistical system that the Government have put forward to improve the quality and integrity of statistics for the public good. I beg to move. Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Official Statistics Order 2008. 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)