Clause 58
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
1:30 pm
John Healey (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Wentworth, Labour)
I want to understand the principle on which some of the hon. Lady’s ideas are based. Does she accept that statistics, as a general public good, should be principally funded by general taxation? If so, does she not accept that the Treasury, as the Government’s finance Department—particularly with its responsibility for value for money and accounting for the public good use of that money—should be involved in setting the budget, albeit on different terms than those suggested by the hon. Lady, as I haveset out?