---

Statistics and Registration Service Bill

The hon. Gentleman has made an important point, with which I was about to deal. It involves complexity, and questions that are often asked. It is wrong to talk of statistics as though they were produced in a value-free way. The question that is posed in the first place is often the real problem—the crux of the matter. The question that is posed, and from which the statistician then analyses the results, is the question, rather than the information that comes out of that. I have been looking at a set of figures on how we can trust statistics, and it was difficult to understand. I will not bore Members by explaining why it was difficult, as it would take an hour for me to analyse that set of statistics about statistics, but it is broken down in several ways that are relevant to the question that the hon. Gentleman posed about what people might or might not believe is preferential treatment for a particular ethnic or religious group. If questions are asked in a particular way—a way that has a sliding scale—complexity is introduced. In the current case, that complexity is about whether one comes to an issue with a preconception about statistics. There is then also a question about trust and then, added into that, questions about one’s age, political opinions, background, where one lives and one’s other interests. Therefore, all the issues surrounding a question become increasingly complex. Unsurprisingly, at the end of that process, whether a Minister has had sight of such information in advance almost becomes immaterial, because the information coming out of it is almost impenetrable to the average person. If we look at a graph that is as simplified as possible, it can still be very difficult accurately to discern what we are meant to understand from a set of figures. Let us look again at the question about whether people think that a disproportionate amount of resources is spent on a particular ethnic or religious group in some part of London, and whether they think that that is fair. It is sometimes difficult to understand whether the question was fairly put, whether the nature of the resources spent is properly understood by the participants in the survey, and whether the Minister who asked the questions in the first place knew exactly what questions were being posed. Whether the Minister knew the answers before they were published is another question entirely. In any event, under this Bill, none of those questions would produce figures that would be national statistics for the board.