Clause 10
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
3:30 pm
John Healey (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Wentworth, Labour)
My point is precisely that the main attention, the important resources and the important expertise of the statistics board in its assessment, audit and compliance function should be directed principally at the assessment and approval—the auditing, if one likes—of the national statistics that form our central set of statistics. Let me reassure hon. Members that the framework is likely to evolve. It seems to me that under the process there will be a strong incentive for Ministers to look actively at submitting additional departmental statistics for approval as national statistics where they are central to the policy functions or the delivery of the programmes for which that Department and those Ministers are responsible. I would expect the board, as part of its statutory duty under the Bill, to comment on the comprehensiveness and coverage of official statistics and to comment also on any official statistics that it believes should be national statistics.
Amendment No. 140 would change the title of the code of practice from “National” to “official”. A consequence of what I hope I have been able clearly to set out before the Committee today is that that change in itself would make no material impact on the standards of good statistical practice that we expect. We expect the code to be a model of good practice for official statistics, and we expect the board to promote it as such. The board is to monitor the production and publication of official statistics and comment on concerns about the quality and good practice in relation to all official statistics.
Amendments Nos. 91 and 19, supported by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, would place a requirement on all Departments that produce official statistics to be bound by the code and report any breach of the code to the board. I do not believe that the reporting of breaches is a matter that should be set out in legislation. The board, working, as it becomes established, with all the interest groups and stakeholders, will develop mechanisms for engaging in respect of the interpretation and application of the code and reporting breaches to it. Those may well be set out in the code itself. For example, under clause 9 the board can provide advice and guidance to persons responsible for official statistics in this context.
Amendment No. 93 would require the board to lay before Parliament a report on any breach that it has investigated. Under the Bill, the board is empoweredto lay any such report or assessment of sufficient importance before this House or the devolved Administrations, or to report it publicly. As with our discussions on clause 8 and the reporting of concerns, it is fundamentally better to leave it to the independent board’s judgment to respond proportionately than to impose obligations on it.
I hope that I have been able to satisfy the hon. Members who tabled the amendments that the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet will not press the lead one and that other amendments will not be moved.