Clause 1

Part of Statistics and Registration Service Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:00 am on 16 January 2007.

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Photo of Theresa Villiers Theresa Villiers Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury 11:00, 16 January 2007

The term “dissemination” covers the use of statistics broadly, and embraces the points that I have made. We need to discuss the crucial issue of the dissemination of statistics and the interpretation put on them.

Another former National Statistician, Len Cook, emphasised the important role that statistics can play in democracy and in influencing political change. Professor Sir Denis Pereira Gray, of the university of Exeter, has stated that lack of trust in statistics

“is a tragedy and seriously undermines democracy and all governments of all parties.”

The Opposition agree that statistics are part of the essential fabric of democratic debate, as has been adverted to this morning. That is a key reason why reform is so important.

Professor Pereira Gray went on to talk of the economic benefits of reform in terms of the international reputation of the UK and inward investment. Distrust in official figures is not only damaging to democratic debate but can cause grave practical and economic problems. The Statistics Commission has pointed out:

“Decisions affecting our lives are driven by official statistics including allocation of public money, operational decisions, policy intervention, policy evaluation, assessment of public service performance”.

Wisely, it goes on to warn:

“Unless the decision-makers trust the statistical evidence, they will ignore it—potentially at a high economic cost.”

We would do well to heed that warning.

If decisions are taken on the basis of incorrect statistics and if a Government make the mistake of believing their own propaganda, they are likely to take the wrong decisions, with damaging consequences for the quality of public services and the stability of the economy. That is one of a number of reasons why for some years the Opposition have been calling forthe independence of statistics and why we have made the independence for statistical services a key part of our triple lock to entrench stability into the economy. That is also why we have tabled amendments to strengthen the Bill and achieve the overall goal set out by amendment No. 152.

I turn to amendment No. 17. The Opposition believe that it is vital to ensure that the reforms encompass not only the ONS but the decentralised statistical activities in the different Departments. If they do not, we will not have secured genuinely independent statistics, nor addressed the problems that I have outlined. One of the weak spots of the Bill is that the reforms are insufficiently rigorous on departmental statistics. The new board is given the obligation to oversee statistics that fall outside the scope of national statistics, but insufficient power and authority to live up to that responsibility.

Amendment No. 17 would go some way to remedying that problem by giving the board explicit authority to supervise production of all official statistics and require improvements. However, we need to go further than that and seek to apply the code of practice across the range of official statistics. Only then will we have a reform of the strength and scope necessary to restore trust in Government figures. I look forward to discussing that matter in detail when we get to clause 10.

Amendment No. 192, tabled by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, provides us with a useful opportunity to look in more detail at the use of statistics. If we are to have a world-class statistical system, we need to have regard to the use to which those figures are put. Therefore, it is important that the new structures set up by the Bill are responsive to the needs of users, both from inside and outside Government. Clearly, there will be necessary constraints on meeting the needs of users dictated by the availability of resources allocated to statistical services. However, within those inevitable constraints, it should be the goal of the new reform system to produce statistics that are relevant to important policy areas and statistics that people want to use.

There is no doubt that whatever problems there are with trust in official statistics, those statistics are still used by many thousands of people, businesses, charities and other organisations both within and outside Government. The Treasury Select Committee heard evidence that the ONS website received, on average, 700,000 visitors per month between April 2005 and January 2006.

The National Statistician, in planning and co-ordinating statistical services, should have user needs at the forefront of her priorities. It is important  that those needs are identified and evaluated in running the system. It is also essential that both the National Statistician and the board engage in frequent and productive consultation with the user community to ensure that this comes about. I welcome the amendment proposed by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth. I also welcome the fact that accessibility is explicitly recognised as important in clause 7(3).

The statistics users forum has highlighted the important contribution that users can make in ensuring that statistics are relevant, effectively distributed andof good quality. It acknowledged that the interaction between Governments, statisticians and usergroups have proved to be productive but feels that further work needs to be done and that there is insufficient non-governmental user input into high-level planning.

I agree with much of the sentiment behind amendments No.191 and 194. Statistical services should take into account the requirements and concerns of local government. As we have heard from the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, the London Government Association, in a helpful note circulated to the Committee, state that it would like to see further standardisation,

“collection and presentation of statistical information”

It is important to facilitate comparison of information at a local level so that we can create meaningful local profiles of service needs and meaningful performance standards and indicators.

Such work will inevitably be subject to the constraints of the resources budgeted for ONS and the Government’s statistical services. Nevertheless, within these constraints, it is important to ensure that local government concerns are recognised, particularly given its role in the collection of data and provision of public services, the measurement of which is a significant function for the statistical services.

I hope that the Government will take notice of the concerns expressed by the Local Government Association and those outlined by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth. The amendments also refer to the regional use of statistics, and perhaps this is where I have a different view to that of the right hon. Gentleman. As I strongly oppose English regional government and regionalisation, I am sceptical about this aspect of the amendments. However, the moves in the Bill, which I am sure we will have the opportunity to discuss at a later stage—