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United Kingdom Statistics Authority

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, which he raised in the pre-appointment hearing and to which Andrew Dilnot responded favourably. I think he sees the potential of improving public access to statistics and the public's ability to understand why they appear as they do, what value they offer and, therefore, how they can influence the democratic process. This goes to the heart of so much of what we do in this place, and the way in which we try to engage our public. Technology, particularly the internet, enables us to do that in an unprecedented way. There is no reason why every citizen cannot have access to the same information that we have—the information that informs the decisions that we make in this Parliament. We should therefore involve the public much more in that. Indeed, we have an obligation to ensure that what the Government and the Opposition say is objective, truthful and properly informative, rather than otherwise; we all know what Disraeli said about damned lies and statistics. We need to ensure that the quality of the numbers and the data that the Government produce genuinely informs the debate, rather than just advancing the partisan interests of those producing them.