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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, the points that I would have made have already been made by other speakers, but I want to emphasise the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moser. At an earlier stage, I said that the function of the board is not so much to regulate the statistics, but to regulate the people who produce the statistics. The noble Lord, Lord Moser, has made the point that if there are references in the Bill to the board producing statistics, that is still capable of generating muddle. The National Statistician, the department, of which the National Statistician will be the head, the various departments and other organs of Government produce the statistics. The role of the board is to see that they do it properly, to coin a phrase, and to scrutinise. It would be enormously helpful if, in response to this debate, the Minister could accept that the board itself does not produce statistics and perhaps amendments could then be made at a later stage, or in another place, to reflect what seems to me to be an absolutely crucial point in this organisation. That lies at the heart of what the noble Lord, Lord Moser, has described as the muddle. I am perhaps not quite as optimistic as he is that that muddle has been totally resolved. It would be very helpful if the Minister could give the kind of assurances for which I have asked.