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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I am grateful and add my congratulations to the Government on introducing the Bill. However, going back to the need to gain public confidence in published data, I propose a comparison with the establishment of the Monetary Policy Committee. Under the previous Conservative Government, that committee was established without total independence, but the present Government, to their great credit, gave it complete independence in deciding its business. Would not the move to re-establish public confidence in statistics be advanced if the commission itself—rather than the House or the Government—could decide which series of data it published? In other words, I make a plea that today’s Bill be a Brown rather than a Clarke reform.