Clause 5
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
1:00 pm
John Healey (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Wentworth, Labour)
I welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. Olner. I hope that hon. Members recognise that I like to be as positive as I can, so I shall pick up on a positive note and reflect on some of the arguments that were put to support amendments Nos. 98 and 29. I am grateful for the acknowledgement and the warm words of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet. That is a tribute to the work that has been done to bring all the devolved Administrations into the new system. I pay tribute to those in the devolved Administrations who have taken the decision to be a part of what we are legislating for.
Probably everyone shares the aims of hon. Members who have tabled amendments in this group. Everyone will recognise that consistent, UK-wide statistics are beneficial and desirable. Such consistency allows statistics about devolved countries to be combined, it allows figures for the UK as a whole to be produced, and for situations in different Administrations to be compared.
However, it is important that we recognise that some divergence is to be expected because of the different political, legal and administrative situations of the four nations. Many of the differences existed prior to devolution.
On the wider point of planning and co-ordination, we have given the board the overall objective of promoting and safeguarding the quality, good practice and comprehensiveness of official statistics. It hasthe specific duty to monitor, and can report publicly on all of the issues to which I referred, as is set out in clauses 7 and 8. In so far as the board considers consistency to be good practice, it can promote it through the code, through its advice and guidance on standards, or as part of the methodologies for the production of statistics, a matter covered in clause 9. We envisage that the board’s statutory objectives of safeguarding comprehensiveness, and the coherence between different sets of official statistics—the Bill defines that as an aspect of quality—will be the key ways in which co-ordination across the system will be assured.
There are a number of ways in which the board can seek to deal with work programmes that it judges are not comprehensive, or lack co-ordination. The board can report its concerns to the relevant Ministers, make its views public, and report concerns to Parliament and the devolved legislatures in either its annual or a special report. Additionally, the board can produce statistics if it considers that there is a gap in statistical coverage to be addressed, and no other body will deliver the statistics to meet that need. However, it would not be helpful—it would be restrictive—to set out in legislation the specific mechanisms that the board will use to deliver on those duties. I hope that my explanation of the options that are available to the board to meet any such concerns will satisfy the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet and her hon. Friends.