Clause 10
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
10:30 am
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks, Conservative)
Thank you, Sir John. The rules would apply to people issuing statistics and a Minister commenting on the statistics and it is the view of those in the statistical community outside this House thatthe rules need to be codified and clarified. This amendment and amendment No. 85 have the support of the Society of Business Economists.
The rules and principles are matters for the board to decide in detail, but we are perfectly entitled to suggest in the Bill at least some of the areas that the board should include when it decides that detail. By tabling the amendment, I am simply suggesting some of the matters that should be included. It is unlike the Minister’s drafting of clause 8, which prescribed exactly, and only, what the board’s areas of concern should be. The amendment states only that among the things that it must decide in detail it would be useful to include the location of the release, the issuer of the release and the time period for commentary on it. I shall consider each of those in turn.
Location is fairly obvious. Most official statistics will be released by the Departments and some will be released by the board, but it should be for the board to decide the location of the release.
As for the manner of the release, the Treasury Committee was concerned about that point. Paragraph 145 of the report states:
“Finally, in the interests of improving public confidence in official statistics, we recommend that the independent statistics office release alongside National Statistics its own considered and non-partisan interpretation.”
In other words, it would not simply be left to the Minister, his advisers or his press officers; therewould be an independent commentary from the new independent board itself. That is extremely important.
It is also important that there would then be an interval before politicians—the Minister, his advisers or the press officers—get involved, so that for a period of perhaps two or three hours the public could see the virgin statistics presented with an independent, non-partisan commentary alongside them. It would later be open to the Department, the Minister or his advisers, to add any top-spin if they wanted to do so. The board must decide on those three important matters when it draws up its code. The amendment does not tell the board precisely how to do that; it merely states that these are three matters at least which the code oughtto cover.