---

Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I disagree absolutely with the final remark made by the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark). If we start the process by saying that the only important outcome is the public’s trust in statistics, and that if we do not achieve that we will have failed, we will have started on the wrong journey in the first place. Although public trust in statistics is a desirable outcome, it would be wrong to see it as the only outcome. That would be too heavy a burden for us to place on the shoulders of statisticians. Some of my best friends are statisticians, although I have never been one. We could, perhaps, compare their popularity with that of politicians and journalists. I hope that at the end of this process they become slightly more popular. Politicians may not, of course, and I will say nothing at all about journalists. In any event, it would be unreasonable of us to expect statisticians to take on such a burden for the sake of our popularity, and it would not be fair to judge the Bill on that basis either.