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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the speech of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). She gave three reasons for seeking to change accountability in Government. When any such change is made, it must be recognised that breaking one set of relationships in favour of another means that they must be reconnected in a different way. It is never quite as straightforward as it appears. I hope that the hon. Lady accepts that the interest of the Cabinet Office and that of the Treasury—and, indeed, the interests of a variety of other Departments, as well as the interest of the Prime Minister of the time—are important in all this. The overall oversight of the Prime Minister in seeking integrity in the way in which statistics are prepared is certainly important, but I do not think it will ever percolate down into the detail. The lead of a specific Department and a specific Cabinet Minister is therefore very significant. What I found most disappointing about the hon. Lady’s speech was the negative and defensive nature of her three questions. First, she asked which Department was least likely to try to interfere. I realise that after 10 years in opposition the Conservative party has become rather negative in its approach to all sorts of things, and has done some of the things for which it castigated the then Opposition until 1997.