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Government Statistics

My Lords, a visitor to your Lordships' House this evening could conclude that approximately 15 per cent of parliamentary time is spent debating matters of humanism, which just illustrates that too small a sample can sometimes be misleading. It was only two years ago that this House was engaged in debating the Bill that set up the new statistics authority. I well remember the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, making strong points about the need for Ministers to be removed from the accountability structure of the organisation and for the appointment of an independent board. We have now seen the new authority up and running. However, there has been a long and undistinguished trend of this Government getting caught up in a problem, laying down the law as to how everyone should behave and then getting caught circumventing their own rules. One only has to think of the donations to political parties issue to reinforce that. No sooner had the Government brought the legislation through Parliament and ensured, to their great credit, that a powerful chairman was appointed, than they sought to get round the rules, even to the extent of attacking the authority for political bias. In the short period since the arrangements have put in place, there have been a number of clashes between the Government and the authority. It is in some ways encouraging that the authority is prepared to exert its independence and to take issue with the Executive. However, we have to look at the Government’s reaction and what they have done. We have heard of one important episode where statistics were released against the specific advice of the authority, as detailed by my noble friend Lord Hamilton and others. One has to ask why that was done. Was the importance of independence not accepted? Was the authority’s advice found to be unsound? Or had the Government’s commitment to independence wavered? However, perhaps much more worrying was the row between the Minister in another place, Mr Phil Woolas, and the authority over immigration. The attack that the Minister launched against the authority was very serious. I should like to hear from the Minister this evening, the noble Lord, Lord Brett, whether Mr Woolas was speaking for the Government more broadly or whether they were just personal remarks—it is difficult to come to that conclusion when the Minister is speaking for the Government as a whole. Have the Government therefore changed their mind on the independence of the statistics authority? Do they now accept that making an attack on it was, at best, extremely ill advised? The Government’s appetite for bad news is limited, notably around the No. 10 bunker, where the sound of messengers being shot is a fairly regular occurrence. In the run-up to the general election, we can expect much more use of statistics and much more controversy around them. However, we must give substantial credit to the statistics authority and in particular to its chairman, Sir Michael Scholar, for the courage that they have shown in bringing the Government to account.