Clause 32
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
6:30 pm
John Healey (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Wentworth, Labour)
My hon. Friend has obviously been doing her research. I was unaware that Japan holds a national statistics day, which is not something that I am inclined to write into the Bill, although we will bear it in mind. As she will understand, I cannot answer for the board’s intentions as she asks me to. She is right that there is widespread concern about the difficulty of maintaining high response rates to certain important surveys and that better understanding of statistics and their use may well help. I anticipate that as the board becomes established and starts to undertake its duties, it will study the points made during our proceedings and that it will want to consider the matter.