Official Statistics Order 2009

The Minister may or may not be aware that, last year, with the support of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, I submitted a paper to the Liaison Committee of the House in which we recommended that the accountability of what was then called the Statistics Board, but which is now the UK Statistics Authority, should be to a Joint Committee of both Houses. I am happy to say that the Liaison Committee accepted that proposal unanimously, and that the former Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, wrote to her opposite number in the other place, Harriet Harman, and asked that this should be drawn to the attention of another place with a view to its agreeing to set up a Joint Committee. I am perfectly certain that the noble Lord, Lord Brett, had nothing whatever to do with this, but the fact is that, after three months, we had no reply at all from another place. In the event, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, had to tell me—as she said, "with some regret"; and, of course, the Liaison Committee’s report had been approved unanimously by this House—that the Leader of the House in another place had refused to accept the recommendation of this House. Therefore, the position now is that the UK Statistics Authority is accountable only to a Select Committee in another place and not to this House. Happily, there are opportunities, and this is one of them, for Members of this House to exercise a form of parliamentary accountability that should, to some extent, make up for the lack of the proper, formal accountability that we should have had. I make no secret of the fact—and I am sure that the noble Lord’s advisers will confirm it—that from the very beginning of the procedures on what became the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, I argued that there should be a Joint Committee of both Houses. At every stage of the Bill, I had the same argument. In the end, that was accepted by the Liaison Committee and this House. However, because the other place did not agree—the right honourable Harriet Harman refused to accept that proposition—the noble Lord, Lord Brett, finds himself, through no fault of his own, in the unfortunate position of being subjected to a form of accountability for statistics. This is the only opportunity we have to raise this, apart from going in for a ballot and having a separate debate on a separate question. The noble Lord produced a perfectly sound argument about why the order is necessary. That is to say, some 54 new bodies whose official statistics are going to be subject to control, review and monitoring by the UK Statistics Authority need to be added. If that authority agrees that the statistics produced by all these bodies comply with the code—and I shall have a word to say about that in a moment—they may be classified not just as official statistics but as national statistics. What is the purpose of this? The noble Lord very properly said that the purpose is to give assurance to the public that the figures that they are being issued with by these various bodies, including government departments and Ministers, can be trusted. He used the word "trust" twice, and he used the phrase, which is exactly what the Minister said in the other place, ""assuring the public that it has been produced in a way that is fully code compliant".—[Official Report, Commons, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 2/3/09; col. 3.]" If the noble Lord looks at his notes, he will see that he said exactly those words. What is the example that is being set to these 54 bodies to produce statistics in a way that complies with the code? Perhaps we should first look at the code. It has a foreword by the chairman of the authority, Sir Michael Scholar, that sets out a code of practice for official statistics. It is divided into a number of principles. Principle 1 is meeting user needs, Principle 2 is impartiality and objectivity and Principle 3 is integrity. It states: ""At all stages in the production, management and dissemination of official statistics, the public interest should prevail over organisational, political or personal interests"." That is so obviously right. Indeed, we argued throughout the passage of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill that these were the kind of principles that the Government were seeking to establish in order, as they put it, to build trust or, as we said, restore public trust, in statistics. What has happened since then? First, an OECD survey showed that, out of the 27 countries in the European Economic Community, this country ranks 27 on the question of public trust in statistics. The EU average for trust is 46 per cent and not trusting is 45 per cent—the balance is "don’t know". In this country, only one-third of those polled trusted official statistics, and nearly 60 per cent did not trust them. This country ranks 27th out of 27 in the crediting of official statistics. If that is going to be corrected then, at every level, the Government as well as the 54 new bodies being added by this order must comply with the principles of the code of practice. Under principle three about integrity, there is a whole lot of things; I shall not bother to read them all out, because they are all perfectly clear. What is the most recent example that we have had of a Government issuing statistics in a way that they ought not to have? I put it neutrally. Noble Lords will remember that No. 10 and the Home Office issued press releases apparently quoting statistics about knife crime and admissions to accident and emergency units as a result of knife crime which totally failed to comply with anything in the code of practice. Worse than that, not only did they not comply but a whole series of e-mails have been published by the Select Committee in another place—which has not yet issued its report; I am very much looking forward to that—that passed between No. 10, the Department of Health and the National Statistician on whether those statistics should have been published in that form. At every single level of officialdom, it was said firmly that those statistics should not be published as they had not been checked or verified, had not been subject to any of the normal rules of the dates and time of release of statistics and that it would be an outrage if they were published. The fact of the matter is that that counted for nothing. The demand that the knife crime statistics should be published came from the Prime Minister. There is a minute from 10 December that says: ""Here is the statement that the PM would like us to publish tomorrow as part of the knife crime announcement"." Then come the details of the statistics that he wanted. There was a very firm view by officials directed to No.10, expressed in another e-mail of 10 December, saying: ""I’ve spoken to a number of people here, including the Head of Profession at the NHS IC and our view is that these provisional data are NOT released.""Our reasons are:""1) As explained already these are provisional data for 2007/08 and 2008/09 and therefore they are potentially inaccurate and may possibly give the wrong impression"." The second reason is perhaps less creditable. It says: ""2) If we allowed these data to be published, we open ourselves up to provide these provisional data to others who may ask for data which shows different trends"." That is to say, somebody might ask for data that might show the whole thing up in a much less favourable light. That is the way that this Government now think, apparently. However, that had no effect. A later e-mail, after a number of futile telephone calls, stated, "I have also been informed that Number 10 are adamant about the need to publish this statistic. As a result, I have been informed that they are likely to publish the data irrespective of the concerns raised". The representations went right to the top. They went to the Permanent Secretary at Number 10, Jeremy Haywood. The National Statistician, Karen Dunnell, "has spoken to Jeremy this morning about the inclusion of certain unpublished statistics in a statement the PM may be making." It was all for no purpose at all. Number 10 went right ahead and published the statistics. Why did it do that? It turned out that Mr Brown, the Prime Minister, had an appointment to meet a number of parents of the victims of knife crime that day, and he wanted to have the statistics published to show that everything was getting much better. That is why. What sort of example does that set to the 54 bodies listed in this schedule? How will that restore public trust in statistics? What sort of temptation may some of these bodies be under to say, "Well if it’s all right for the Prime Minister, it’s all right for us"? We had an apology from Jeremy Haywood who said that perhaps they did not pay enough attention to the views of the professional statisticians. What he meant was that the Prime Minister did not pay enough attention to the views of the professional statisticians. He summed it all up in the word "we". There was a brief apology on the Floor of the House from the Home Secretary, who said that perhaps some of the statistics should not have been published and that she was sorry. Both apologies were totally inadequate for what was a major breach not only of the code, but of all possible principles that should apply to the issue of statistics. The Minister has commended this order to the Committee on the grounds that it greatly extends the list of bodies whose statistics the public will be invited to trust. But 27th out of 27? We can only go up. The history of this Government’s misuse of statistics has been utterly deplorable. Ministers must recognise that if they are going to achieve their objective of restoring public trust in statistics, the kind of example set by the Prime Minister last December has simply got to stop. When it issues its report, I would expect the Select Committee in another place to use more politic language than I have used, but for those of us who took part from the very beginning in the proceedings on the statistics Bill, it is nothing short of disgraceful that here we are, more than two years later, still facing such misbehaviour by Ministers, despite the best advice that they could get from the people who really ought to know, which sets a perfectly deplorable example. I have now got that off my chest. I hope that the Minister will himself add to the apology given by his colleagues. If he does not like listening to Back-Bench Peers expressing these views, he has a perfectly good remedy. He can go straight to Harriet Harman and tell her that there should be a Joint Committee of both Houses. Then these matters would be dealt with there and not, as they are this afternoon, on the Floor of this Grand Committee.