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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 236A: 236A: Clause 52, page 26, line 6, leave out paragraph (b) The noble Viscount said: The Statistics Commission is to disappear, as have other of this Government’s short-lived creations; yet the commission has established itself well and developed its practice in an exemplary way. The given reason for its departure is the wish to avoid, "““competing independent centres of statistical expertise””." The commission will have been well pleased with ““independent”” and ““expertise”” but mystified by ““competing””. How could a commission spending £1.5 million a year advising and monitoring ever be in competition with the Office for National Statistics, with its £200 million a year? We need a more convincing explanation. Could the commission have become too independent and too expert and thus out of day-to-day control? I beg to move.