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Census (England and Wales) Order 2009

I thank the noble Lord. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, asked why there will be no impact assessment. As no business or voluntary body will be required to undertake any duty that the ONS believes might prove detrimental to their work, delay their normal day-to-day business or place an additional cost upon them other than asking the manager of any commercial establishment to hand out or collect questionnaires to any usual residents and then complete a short questionnaire in respect of their establishment, the ONS believes that the 2011 census impact on the private or voluntary sector will be minimal. The noble Lord talked about it taking half an hour to complete a form; I have seen in my briefing reference to 10 minutes, but we will see. An impact assessment will be published before the census regulations are laid in the spring of 2010, so there will be one before the regulations. Other countries have a five-yearly census, and the noble Lord highlighted those countries. Given our highly mobile population, particularly considering the money being allocated, why would we not have a five-yearly census? There were proposals for a five-yearly census in 1976, 1986 and 1996, but they were all rejected on cost grounds. The ONS is currently reviewing the option beyond 2011, so there will be a review of how we take it from here, given the issues that the noble Lord raised about the great changes in our society—the electronic changes, the ethnic changes and the way our country looks now compared with how it looked 10 years ago. There will be a review of whether a 10-yearly census is the way forward. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, asked about stakeholders being consulted on costs. Stakeholders were widely consulted on the pros and cons of different options. Population-estimate quality is paramount. This cost and this level of investment are required to provide data of a profoundly excellent quality. The noble Lord asked about competition for preparations in order to reduce costs. Fifty per cent of the census costs are for outsourced services, all of which have been subject to full competitive tendering. If the noble Lord wants more information on that, I shall be happy to correspond with him. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, took as an example the Arab tick-box and asked why it should not say "Arab/White" or "Arab/Mixed". He reflected with us on what it will be appropriate for people to tick both now and in the future, given our increasingly mixed community. At present, we say that people should tick the mixed or multiple options. There is always a space to write in, so if people think that none of the options refer to them, they can always use the blank write-in space, and that will have to be used as part of the statistical dissemination. The noble Lord talked about questions relating to national identity and spoken English—for example, "How good is your English?"—and asked how subjective and not necessarily convincing answers could be measured. It is true that if English were not my first language, I might think that it was better than someone else considered it to be. The main purpose of the national identity question is to encourage participation in the census by allowing respondents to express their identity in a manner that is meaningful to them. English language proficiency has been well tested. A lot of surveys and testing have been carried out by the ONS and have shown that information of sufficient quality has been provided for the respondents. Therefore, it may not be perfect but it is of a sufficient quality. The noble Lord also asked about the workplace address where people have more than one job, and he quoted the contract plumber who moves around. People should give the workplace address for their main job, or state that they have been based at home in the case of the plumber who moves around. This will be made clear in the instructions within the question. I was asked how the questions were chosen. The key requirement for the 2011 census is to provide a robust estimate of the population count and a benchmark for key population statistics on a consistent and comparable basis for small areas and small populations. The specific criteria used by the ONS for judging the priority for topics to include in the census are set out. User need is one; others include data needed for small geographies of populations, a lack of alternative sources to the census, and UK comparability—there is a need for UK-wide outputs. Continuity with previous censuses is also very important. A lot of users want continuity; they want to see trends over 10, 20 and 30 years to decide what services they need to provide. Respondent burden and costs are criteria that are taken into account, as are operational requirements, population-based requirements, international recommendations, equality legislation and use for coding and derivations. I think that I have already dealt with the issue of the Lockheed Martin employees. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, was concerned about the confidentiality of the census data. Personal census data are kept confidential at all times and released into the public domain only after 100 years. The ONS takes very seriously the confidentiality of any individual’s information and it has a 200-year track record of maintaining census confidentiality. The information is used only for statistical purposes, and anyone unlawfully disclosing personal census information will, as we have said, be liable to prosecution. The noble Lord referred to the recent troubles in another place. However, the data are even exempt from the Freedom of Information Act under Section 40 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act. Confidentiality is written into primary legislation. All persons acting as agents for the UK Statistics Authority in the conduct of a census will be covered by the same stringent confidentiality restrictions as apply to census officers themselves. There are penalties for breaches. Completed questionnaires will be posted back or returned securely online. They will be seen only by those census staff responsible for processing data. Data from the census will be held securely and, under the current policy, will be treated as confidential for, as I have said, 100 years. The paper questionnaires will be destroyed in a controlled manner. Some specialist researchers are allowed supervised access to record data under licence, but not until they have signed confidentiality agreements. I hope that that answers the noble Lord. The noble Lord has said that government data have been lost; that is true. He said that he would need assurances that data will not be lost by the ONS or by contractors. The ONS has a two-year history of protecting personal data. It is an utmost priority for it to continue to ensure security. Any possible threats have been assessed and tested to destruction, but obviously there are still possibilities. We shall just have to keep a very close eye on the situation, and extensive measures have been put in place to address such problems. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, asked whether data will be stored on discs or memory sticks. All USB ports on computers with access to census data will be disabled. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, asked whether he could be identified as Scottish, British and European. The national identity question on the census form will allow multiple responses. I hope that I have covered most of the questions that noble Lords have put. I thank them for an important debate, and I am sure that we will meet again when the regulations appear, should this order go through. Motion agreed.