Statistics and Registration Service Bill
During a debate on a bill set up an Independent Board to oversea government statistics, Brooks Newmark argues against a two-tier system of "official statistics" and "national statistics" which will undermine public trust.
Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): I, too, shall speak briefly in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). I am a great believer in Schumacher's saying that small is beautiful, but I am also I am a great believer that simplicity is beautiful. However, it is in the Treasury's DNA to make things more complex when they only need to be made simpler. I do not understand the false dichotomy that the Treasury insists on setting up between what it calls official statistics and national statistics. The Bill appears to entrench a two-tier system, which cannot but undermine public trust. As my hon. Friend has said, it cannot be a coincidence that the statistics that the Government choose to be official rather than national statistics are those that relate to matters such as crime, health and education. The Government have decided that all the important matters that our constituents care most about should be stuck in a bucket called "official statistics" and not "national statistics". New clause 4 would remove that false dichotomy between national statistics, which must adhere to a code of practice, and official statistics, which do not.
Opposition Members-I include SNP Members-agree that the code of practice should apply regardless of the origin of the statistics. Furthermore, the statistics board must have sufficient powers to coerce Government Departments, or else Ministers will simply ignore it, or at the very least the board must have the right to assess which statistics should count as national statistics.
John Healey: The debate on this subject has been shorter than debates on it in previous proceedings, but it has nevertheless been useful. I hope that Members will accept that statistics produced and published by government-by more than 200 Crown bodies-differ in levels of importance and that the Bill has a wide definition of official statistics. The definition of official statistics that we have used is wide in order to allow the board to monitor and report on the ever-increasing range of official statistics and official statistical information that is being produced across government. For that reason, it is important that we give the board a starting point for its process of assessment and approval. That starting point is those statistics that are designated as national statistics-a concept that has been established since the reforms of 2000. We are also giving the board, and the system, a way to evolve in the future, as the board will report on its views about the comprehensiveness and coverage of the system and official statistics can be nominated to the board for assessment.
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I should point out to the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) that there is no false dichotomy: there are already two-tiered-indeed, multi-tiered-official statistics. He surely would not argue that figures such as population data, the gross domestic product and unemployment figures are of equal status and importance to other official statistics produced by the Government and covered by the definition in the Bill, such as the income derived from unclaimed lost property or the number of TV licences held by particular Departments. Surely the crucial feature is not that all official Government statistics be assessed and approved, as the hon. Gentleman seems to be arguing, but that all the most important ones, designated as national statistics, are. It is for that reason that I do not accept amendment No. 18.
Mr. Newmark: The point that I was trying to make is that the Treasury is obsessed with making matters more complex, not simpler. All that I am asking it to do is to try to simplify the system. Creating a two-tier system makes matters more complex.
John Healey: On the contrary, there will be clearly identified and published national statistics and the board will be charged with drawing up a code of practice, with assessing the production and handling of those statistics against its standards, and with approving them as national statistics. That will make the system clear and efficient rather than adding confusion and complexity, and it will allow the board to concentrate on what is most important, namely, giving the Government, the public and a wide variety of other data and statistics users greater confidence that the most important statistics are given the most scrutiny by the board, and giving them the confidence to rely on those statistics.
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LATER IN THE SAME DEBATE
Mr. Newmark: I do not mean to throw the Financial Secretary's words back at him, but he said in Committee that Parliament, not the board, should ultimately approve the rules and procedures relating to the pre-release of statistics in the final form prior to publication. If so, why not put pre-release on a statutory footing in the Bill now, instead of avoiding the issue and hoping that it will go away?
John Healey: The hon. Gentleman served on the Committee. If he hears me out, he will hear me emphasise again that we do propose to put the pre-release arrangements on a statutory footing, because of their special importance. Unlike the proposals from the two Opposition Front Benches for those arrangements to be captured in the code of practice, we propose an approach that sets them out in statute, in regulation, not in a code that is backed by but not set out in statute, as advocated by the hon. Gentleman's party.