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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I support the amendments. As we have already heard this afternoon, the creation of public trust is at the centre of the endeavour. Public trust will be better created if there is independent and professional critical analysis of statistics. I would like the amendments to be widened at the next stage to include the positive aspects of critical analysis as well as the negative ones. We are dealing with a profession whose workings are not widely understood by the public. Therefore, the public will always have a feeling that these matters need to be explained to them by someone whom they can trust, which means someone who they believe really understands what they are talking about. That means the professionals. It is therefore central to the working of the Act that the board has the role of critical analysis and that it delegates that role to the National Statistician. Indeed, one would hope that, when there is a question of interpretation, a consultative process would be undertaken between the interested parties to consider where the issues lie and to work out who might be in support of what before the dialogue goes into the public domain. The thrust of these amendments is entirely right.