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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, the proposal underlying the Bill was excellent, but the original Bill was seriously flawed. It displayed a lack of conviction, with Ministers showing great reluctance to let go and trust the board. Happily, this House has done what it is here to do. Even if we have not achieved everything that some people wanted, we have secured some major improvements. Within a unified board, there is greater clarity between the role of the board and the role of the National Statistician and executive. Her status as National Statistician and head of profession has been enhanced. Ministers no longer decide unilaterally which statistics are national statistics and which are not. The code now applies to all statistics, not just national statistics. The principle of pre-release has been accepted, the board is to be consulted and, if it is not satisfied with the way in which the regime is working, it can say so. I, too, accept that this was not my first preference, but I am prepared to accept the position that we are now in. The Cabinet Office is now the residual department and, as the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said, it is clear that the regime applies to the totality of official statistics. By happy coincidence, the Government have belatedly accepted what this House has been arguing all along, that improving trust in statistics is an essential component of the wider initiative to improve trust in government life. As a result, they have volunteered the 24-hour maximum on pre-release. I am more sanguine than some that this will never be pushed higher than that figure. It has come forward late on, with the creation of the hub separating release from comment, which is possibly the single most influential change in the whole system. I, too, endorse the proposal to appoint Sir Michael Scholar as chair. His excellent qualities have been referred to, but he was also for a while Permanent Secretary at the Welsh Office and so has a vested interest in making a success of the move of the headquarters of the board to Newport. I hope that the other place—although, of course, it should be not the other place but Parliament as a whole—will endorse this appointment. I agree, too, that there is an unfinished piece of business and that we need a Joint Committee with the change to the Cabinet Office as the residual department. The responsibility will now move to the Public Administration Committee. I hold the chairman of that committee in very high regard but I do not think that that committee is really equipped to take on the role, so I strongly support this proposal. The process of the Bill has been arduous. We have probably had one more round of ping-pong than we needed but I think that we can take satisfaction from the work that has been done. However, it is ironic that we started work on the Bill shortly after the other place voted that the Cross-Benchers should be thrown out of this House, in which case the contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Moser, and others on the Cross Benches would not have been made.