---

Statistics and Registration Service Bill

The amendment is in two parts. It is keen to ensure that there is open competition and that that competition should be overseen by people who are independent of the board and, as one presumably now says, the Cabinet Office. It is essential to have an open competition. It is important to have an assurance that that will be the case. The Minister referred earlier to the track record of the Treasury and the Chancellor in making major appointments; he referred to the MPC. Whatever the strengths of the individuals who sit on the MPC—and those individuals have been very good—therehas been nothing vaguely approaching an open competition for appointments to it. There has not even been a closed competition; it has been a question not of a knock in the middle of the night but of a phone call, with the Chancellor asking ““Wouldyou like to be on the MPC?””. It is important thatthat approach should not be repeated for theStatistics Board and that there should be an open competition. I am less convinced that the competition should be overseen by people who are independent of the board and the Cabinet Office. If the competition is open, the Cabinet Office should be capable of conducting it in an acceptable manner. Presumably that is the way in which the Nolan principles operate in most cases—there is an open competition but the department or the Minister making the appointment makes it without the belt-and-braces approach of having an independent overseer.