Official Statistics Order 2008

I am grateful to the three Members of the Committee who contributed to this debate. I appreciate their questions and their assertion that we are all concerned about the integrity and validity of statistics, and their recognition that the Act passed last year makes significant movement in that direction. I am also grateful that the Committee has welcomed this order. I appreciate their criticisms, some of which I shall attempt to explain in the form of constructive action that the Government will take to meet the anxieties that have been expressed. However, in one or two cases I shall have to disappoint noble Lords opposite. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, returned to one of the fundamental and most significant issues that we debated last year, which he will have known having read our proceedings; namely, who should select the statistics? The noble Lord says that he still finds the position adopted by the Government unsatisfactory and that this should be done by the authority. We had a very intensive debate on this issue last year. The Government’s view was that Ministers should do the initial selection regarding the work of their departments. But, the authority—as it now is, but the board as we discussed it then—will have a most fundamental role in evaluating and commenting on such statistics. The essence of the board’s role is assessment and scrutiny of the quality of official statistics, which is why it has been brought into existence to fulfil that most important of roles. I hear what the noble Lord says about the difficulty that the layman will have with the distinction between official and national statistics. There is no easy way to solve that issue. I have looked at others' attempts to produce a definition of the difference between the two and have seen them struggle. My honourable friend in the other House made an analogy according to military ranks. I thought that that was a path which I would certainly not follow today. I just make the obvious point that when statistics have been defined as national statistics, they are of increasing import in the role of the board in assessment and scrutiny. That is why the order is necessary to guarantee that those statistics that are already national should continue under the new regime once established on 1 April. The difficulty with the establishment of the board—or the authority, as it is to be known—is that it drops into an ever moving stream of the evolution of statistics. We are not setting up a board with a clean sheet where it can say, ““Now we will approach the whole of the work that we have to do afresh””. Far from it. It is dropping into a very important role as an assessor, analyst and evaluator of statistics that are in constant flow. The order reflects that difficulty. Although I very much respect the broad case made by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, about some of his anxieties, he probably underestimated that aspect. It is inevitable that the Government are involved in constant work to meet the necessary framework within which the board will operate, but everything is not cut and dried at this point. That is why we will need the additional orders. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, referred to one of the most important of those orders, which concerns the issue of pre-release. That work has not been completed yet. It needs to be in place, but, of course, it is subject to parliamentary approval and will be tabled as an order. I agree with the noble Lord that it is likely that noble Lords opposite, and the Government, will think that order at least as important as this one—but I will not put them in rank order. The noble Lord will recognise that the significance of this order is that it gives us the framework in which national statistics will be defined as such for the Statistics Board—a very important concept. I do not disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that, if last year's debates were anything to go by, he is likely to subject the concept of pre-release to as much interest as he does this order. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, referred to an issue debated extensively during the passage of the Act on which the Government have made some progress. As he said, as a follow-up to the passage of the Act, there has been correspondence between the Leaders of the two Houses about whether there should be a Joint Committee. Of course, they are the proper authorities to look at the issue of Joint Committee scrutiny. The noble Lord will recognise that one of the great strengths of the structure that we established last year was to create a new structure of scrutiny for statistics. It is transferred from the Treasury—his colleagues were very assertive that that should be so—to the Cabinet Office. It was argued at the time as one of the great strengths of the Cabinet Office that it had some responsibility across government and could provide that surveillance. Of course, that is also true of the Select Committee that scrutinises its work; the Public Administration Select Committee. It enjoys that strength too. Regarding the proposal for a Joint Committee, the noble Lord is really saying that this Select Committee of the other place may not be adequate to do the job of scrutinising the Cabinet Office in this important work with regard to the Statistics Authority; when the Government take an entirely different view. In all parts of the other place and this place there is general respect for the work of Select Committees, the extent to which they keep their departments up to the mark and the power of their reports. The Public Administration Select Committee has a superb record, and several of its reports in recent years have been at the forefront of public concern and debate. That committee is poised to take responsibility for this work with regard to the Cabinet Office. That seems to the Government entirely appropriate. Of course, I am at one with one of the noble Lord’s arguments; that there are a number of key colleagues in this House who have vast experience of statistics and who can bring a dimension to the debate—which we saw during the passage of the legislation—which it is difficult for the other place to match. But I do not think that it can be gainsaid that the Select Committee structure provides an excellent basis for scrutiny of the process on behalf of the people who Parliament represents. We can all have every confidence that the Public Administration Select Committee, which will take responsibility for this scrutiny work as far as the Cabinet Office is concerned, will do its work to great satisfaction. Does that mean that noble Lords have no role with regard to the scrutiny of statistics? I am all too well aware of the skill with which this House deploys its resources and the way in which it holds the Government to account. I am not sure that I have done this, but my ministerial colleagues often say that they think their jobs are a good deal more difficult at this end than they are for colleagues at the other end—I am getting a few nods from colleagues, who are well equipped to respond. If any issues or problems crop up regarding statistics—the work of the Statistics Authority or of Ministers with regard to the material that they present to it—I have not the slightest doubt that we would have the fullest scrutiny at this end; and I can enumerate those key figures who will play their full part in that. I have not the slightest doubt that this House will play its part in that work, but I defend the Government’s decision that the government department that now supervises statistics is the Cabinet Office, and it is appropriate that its Select Committee should be responsible for supervising its work. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked me about Scotland, largely because he knows that I always quake the moment any devolved Administration issue arises. Any of us close to the devolved Administrations have every right to quake when we are operating in the British Parliament, and are all too well aware of the challenges which can be thrown up in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. They are responsible for the production of statistics in Scotland, subject to the scrutiny of the Scottish Parliament. They have every reason to look closely at the models that we are establishing for parliamentary scrutiny, and will be engaged in similar processes themselves. The noble Lord ought not to worry unduly about that. With my past interest in Newport, I took the opportunity of the wonderful occasion of the Welsh victory against the French in the Grand Slam the week before last to speak to a Newport colleague about resources, how the office was bedding down in Newport and whether some of the forebodings articulated in the middle of last year had come to pass. I got the report back that things were settling down extremely well in Newport. There is no problem with recruitment of expertise. The noble Lord asked about the revenue implications. I have no doubt at all that one of the aspects of the move was an advantage in redistribution of work and resources to parts of Britain other than London. Also, however, it has revenue implications in so far as it is somewhat less costly to run these big operations outside London than inside. That is the plus factor, which I remember we discussed last year at considerable length during the passage of the legislation. I mention the issue that the noble Lord raised on the other orders. I can promise him those, one of which I know that he will enjoy debating. There will be a second version of this order. I confess that that is because not all the work has been completed on the bodies that should be included. If they look somewhat arbitrary, there is an element of that in virtually all statistics. Some of these bodies are able to produce readily assimilable material which is a guide to their work, but may not be on the same level as that of other organisations. That will be a feature of such a disparate range of bodies, but we are determined to include all those bodies which generate official statistics that may be considered worthy of being, in due course, national statistics. The noble Lord, Lord Ryder, asked me about the Bank of England. Of course, I quaked again at that. We have had our moments of debate on the Bank of England over the past few months in a different context. The Bank has its own code of practice for statistics. The Government will certainly want to discuss this with the Bank, and are doing so against a background where we are now only a matter of months from a significant reform of the role of authorities such as the Bank of England and the FSA, and their work in scrutinising the banking sector. That work is continuing, but the noble Lord will have to await the outcome of those deliberations before he is able to turn a searchlight on the Bank of England’s own code of statistics and it effectiveness. The code established by the Statistics Authority will now certainly be an important benchmark against other codes. I may not have answered every single question. I can see to his agitation that I have not answered the question of the noble Lord, Lord Ryder, to his satisfaction. I do not have a great deal more to add at this stage. If I can supplement the answer I have given him, I will, of course, write to him and ensure that other Members of the Committee receive a copy of that letter. I do not have anything beyond that, but the noble Lord will recognise that the work of the tripartite authorities, particularly banking scrutiny, is the subject of considerable work in government in the preparation of legislation which we have already announced to be only a matter of months away. He will appreciate that the issue which he has raised is bound to be included in that framework. On Question, Motion agreed to.