Clause 1
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
10:30 am
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks, Conservative)
I, too, welcome the motion that we have just passed. I feel a sense of history settling on the shoulders of the Committee.
Amendments Nos. 152 and 17 stand in my name. I hope that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth will speak to his amendments, which are very much in tune with mine, and the gist of which I certainly support.
Amendment No. 152 states the purpose of the Bill, which is not set out anywhere in the Bill. That might be a surprise. Clause 1 simply establishes the statistics board, and we do not discover until we reach clause 7 or 8 what its objects are and what its functions are to be. That is a mistake. This is a big Bill, and an important one, and it is rather dull drafting that it does not set out what the purpose of the new statistics board is to be. I rather regret, given the historical importance of the Bill and the infrequency with which we update statistical legislation, that it does not have a preamble. Other statistical laws around the world have preambles, and we could easily have incorporated one here. However, I am advised that, as a preamble has not been tabled by the Minister as part of the drafting, it is now too late to incorporate one.
We can and should set out up front the purpose of the new statistics board, and I hope that the Minister will concede that it is important to do so. This is not simply a Whitehall rearrangement. He has made it clear—as was stated explicitly in the Queen’s Speech—that this is a worthwhile attempt to enhance confidence in statistics by strengthening the independence with which they are collated and published. In other words, the new statistics board is avowedly a public good—that is the intention of the Bill—and I believe that we should affirm that loud and clear.
I have drafted a declaration in three parts: first, to ensure that the board upholds the quality of statistics; secondly that it should have the overarching duty of supervising their dissemination; and thirdly that it should perform both those tasks for the public good. There is a reference to quality in clause 7, but there the definition is more restrictive—it is to promote and safeguard the quality of official statistics. My wording is much more general, namely that the board should have an overarching duty to enhance the quality of all statistics—I have not said “official” or “national” or anything else. I have used tighter drafting, using the word “uphold” rather than “promote”, and I have widened it so as to refer to official, national or other statistics.
The point about supervising dissemination is self-evident: statistics belong to all of us. The board should be under an overriding duty to be involved in their dissemination and to supervise them because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet said, statistics are a key part of democracy. If we believe in more active citizens and in empowering people to participate more fully in democracy, they should have a right to statistical information, which was once the sole preserve of Ministers and Governments.
I would like the new board to adopt a motto rather like that of the Italian statistical office, but we cannot put that into the Bill. The point of that motto in Italy is its recognition that information is one of the cores of the state and that statistics are a key part of democracy. If we believe that we should say so loud and clear.
Amendment No. 17 strengthens clause 7. One of the fundamental criticisms of the Bill, outside and inside Parliament, is that nowhere does it give the new board the duty or the power to supervise the statistical system as a whole. That is a weakness; the board should enforce high standards throughout the system. It is not enough for it simply to be given the power to monitor, to get reports or to publish commentary. We want the new board to be more than a commentator; we want it to have real teeth in all Departments to supervise the high standards that we require and if necessary to intervene to secure them.