Official Statistics Order 2010

My Lords, all Members of the Committee will be aware of the important work that is being done by the UK Statistics Authority. This body was created in 2008 with a statutory responsibility to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics. This includes the authority monitoring and reporting on official statistics. Under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics, government departments, the devolved Administrations and other Crown bodies are automatically deemed to be official statistics. The Act also makes provision for identifying other organisations as producers of official statistics. This is important as it enables their work to fall within the remit of the authority and for the public to have confidence in their statistics. The purpose of this order, which is subject to the affirmative procedure, is to specify these organisations. The UK Statistics Authority has been consulted in preparing this order in accordance with the statistics Act, and is content for it to be laid. The Cabinet Office has laid this order on behalf of government departments in preference to each department laying an order for the bodies for which they are responsible. This approach saves considerable parliamentary time. This is the third such order, and it revokes and replaces the one that came into force on 1 April 2009. The previous order contained 54 bodies. In arriving at the current order, three bodies have been removed from the previous order and six new bodies have been added. On 14 October, the Government announced their plans to reform 481 quangos. Consequently, 37 of the 57 bodies in the order will be reformed. Once the Public Bodies Bill has received Royal Assent, many of these will be abolished through legislation. However, until the bodies are abolished or reformed, it is important to continue to recognise them as producers of official statistics so that the public can have confidence in their statistical outputs. The Government will lay a further order for the House to consider once the reforms have been completed. This is likely to be some time in 2012. In summary, this order extends slightly the number of bodies that are subject to the UK Statistics Authority's oversight. These bodies will have to work to the new code of practice for official statistics, and their statistics will have the potential to be nominated for formal assessment by the authority as national statistics. The agreement of the House to the order is a vital part of enhancing public confidence in official statistics. I beg to move.