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United Kingdom Statistics Authority

Let me begin by declaring an interest: I am an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. The society graciously bestowed that honour on me for my work in the 1990s in advancing the case for an independent national statistical service and proper parliamentary scrutiny of statistics. I am delighted to observe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) is present. It was he who introduced the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, which completed the journey from a statistical service that was half independent and half controlled by Government to a service in which the producers of the statistics, the Office for National Statistics and its agents, and the supervisor of that production, the United Kingdom Statistics Authority, had become entirely independent of Government. I also commend the Public Administration Committee on its work both in monitoring the work of the authority and in conducting the process of this appointment. It is interesting to recall, as I do, the nervousness that was abroad at one time about Select Committees having any role in public appointments, given that this appointment has effectively been made entirely by Parliament, and has been endorsed by a Select Committee with the approval—hopefully—of the House. I know Sir Michael Scholar well and I think that he did an outstanding job as the first chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, in difficult circumstances. Nobody should underestimate the pressure that was put on him when he dared to criticise the Government of whom I was a member. He criticised the frankly preposterous behaviour of part of the Government—special advisers in No. 10 and in the Home Office—in allowing not just the pre-release of statistics, but the traducing of statistics which should have been properly released by the Office for National Statistics. That was part of a culture that went back to previous Administrations, and we have seen one example of it during this Administration, whereby special advisers in No. 10, all jockeying among themselves to show that they are more adept than their colleagues in getting material into the newspapers and anxious for attention from the master, cajole the people they believe are their subordinates—the special advisers in the individual Departments. They say, ““We can see this on the grid””—the wretched grid—““and we must know about this. We want early information. There is something else coming up. We have heard a rumour that those nasty people in the Opposition are about to do X or Y, or there is a terribly bad news story, Z, and if only we can get this good news out, all will be fine.”” That is all without purpose, it never works, it always ends in tears and it carries on. The problem is that previously, unless a strong and confident Minister was looking after those statistics, it was all too easy for this abuse to run away with itself. I had only one occasion when those at No. 10 tried this on me and I told them to get lost, saying that if they wanted I would come to the House to make a statement about what they were trying to suborn my officials and special advisers, who are of the highest integrity, into doing. I was securing my position and a very large number of Ministers, sadly, are not in that happy position. I know what the chuntering was when Sir Michael Scholar criticised the practice of the Home Office and No. 10 in December 2008—I believe it was then. It is no coincidence that much of the attempt to bypass official release mechanisms has taken place in respect of Home Office statistics. That is not because the Home Office statisticians—or now the Ministry of Justice statisticians—are any less worthy or any less replete with integrity; it is because of the highly political nature of the information they convey. Sir Michael set out, in handling that abuse, to continue in a similar manner, and he put his foot down on a number of further occasions—two when the Labour Government were in power and once under this Government. I hope that, bit by bit, Ministers, officials and special advisers will get the message that in the 21st century it is no more appropriate to try to interfere with the generation, organisation, analysis and publication of official statistics than it is to interfere in the generation, analysis and publication of the accounts of a Department. No Minister or senior official at any level would dream of saying, ““We've got to alter the accounts. It is a bit inconvenient but this has come up and we seem to have lost some money.”” Such alteration is a criminal offence for directors of companies. It is worth remembering that in the early part of the 19th century it was perfectly commonplace for Ministers to ensure that there was a bit of fiddling of the statistics. A lot of Ministers lined their own pockets, a few got charged with corruption but generally got away with it, and one or two were impeached. That was the culture of the times. We have moved away from that in respect of financial probity, but we now have to see a similar cultural shift in respect of statistical probity because otherwise the whole political debate and discourse in this country will be the loser. We can have serious discussions when it comes to arguments about finance. We know what the deficit is and we can argue about what its components are, but no one suggests that it has somehow been made up. It is there. With other statistics—particularly social statistics, and particularly those on crime and immigration—there has been a ridiculous argument about whether crime has gone up or down. The same applies to unemployment and so on. We must move away from that, because it is a real turn-off for the public and it is very undermining for the quality of debate in this country. Let me make two points, the first of which is on pre-release statistics. The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) was quite right to draw attention to the fact that before the election the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General made a lot of play of the fact that he was going to abandon pre-release notice, or move at best to one hour. We should have abandoned it when we were in government, but we did not do so. He said that he would and then, when he came into government, hey presto, he supped at the royal jelly—or something like that—or had a nod from somebody at No. 10 and suddenly decided that he was wrong.