Clause 52
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
1:00 pm
Theresa Villiers (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
I wish to speak briefly on the clause, which envisages the abolition of the Office for National Statistics and the Statistics Commission. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of both those organisations.
With regard to the ONS, the key problem that we have focused on is the treatment by Ministers of statistics. Of course it is important to consider the methodology and quality of the production of statistics, but there is consensus that they are of high quality. The problem that we are trying to address is political interference, or the perception of it, in the fruits of the labours of statisticians. I pay tribute to the high quality of the work of Government statisticians.
I also congratulate the Statistics Commission on its excellent work since it was founded in 2000, and I give credit to the Government for setting it up. It has been a fearless defender of statistical integrity and a fearless critic of ministerial activities in a number of instances. As we have stated, it is a weakness of the Bill that it merges the activities of the Office for National Statistics and the Statistics Commission. That was why we tabled a number of amendments to separate responsibility for the production of statistics from the responsibility to scrutinise their production and release. There would have been a much more effective structure if the Bill had kept those functions separate, as illustrated by the effective role played by the Statistics Commission in the past few years.