| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
12.27 am
Mr. David Maclean (Penrith and The Border): I consider the Bill to be misconstrued and wrong on a number of grounds. If the national census is important to the Government, and if a number of intrusive questions are to be asked, the Bill should have been introduced by them in their time so that we could have had a debate before 10 o'clock at night. They have used the private Member's Bill route to advocate the measure, given it time after the main business of the day has been dealt with, and introduced it after 10 o'clock. That is offensive to the House.
That apart, the substance of the Bill is offensive. It is wrong for the state to ask questions about religion. No criminal penalty will be attached to failure to respond, but that does not make the Bill less offensive. Let us be in no doubt: answering the question is not voluntary. When advocating his amendment, whereby there would be no penalty, Lord Weatherill made it clear that he had taken such a route because although, ideally, he would have
addressed the question of the census being voluntary, he had realised that he could not do that without wrecking the Bill. He had to send the Bill on to this House and said:
- I have reflected with care on what your Lordships have had to say . . . I feel that we should take the arguments about a voluntary question seriously. In the interests of progressing the matter smoothly, and so that, as the noble Earl and other noble Lords wished, the Bill may pass to another place in a fit condition, I am proposing an amendment which would have the effect of removing the liability to a penalty under Section 8 of the Census Act--[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 February 2000; Vol. 609, c. 364.]
I pay tribute to the Government for forcing the matter on to the agenda. It has forced us to examine the Census Act 1920 and question the validity of holding a census. It has forced us to read for the first time the Government's White Paper, "The 2001 Census of Population", which was published in March 1999. We would not have bothered to read that before coming across the Government's ruthless fanaticism for driving the Bill through the House.
The research that has been conducted on the census suggests to me, as someone who held ministerial responsibility, that the census is an example of research that the Government are good at starting but never know when to end. Like most Government research projects that I came across in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and in the Home Office, one of its main conclusions was that more essential research had to be undertaken, at great cost, over the next few years.
Other colleagues have mentioned John Rickman, the Clerk of the House of Commons. In 1798, he set out the justification for a census. As the House knows, the first census was conducted in 1801. He said that the main reason for a national census was that the intimate knowledge of any country must form the rational basis of legislation and diplomacy. John Rickman believed that the intimate knowledge of a country was necessary for legislation, but not that the state should have intimate knowledge of individuals' religion. Before the House gets carried away with John Rickman's point, it may be worth considering some other points that that distinguished Clerk made as justifications for the census.
If some hon. Members rely on only one of John Rickman's points for justification, I am entitled to rely on others to show that a census is no longer necessary and that the Bill may therefore be unnecessary. John Rickman's second point was that an industrious population is the basic power and resource of any nation, and that therefore its size needs to be known.
John Rickman's third reason for a census was that the number of men who were required for conscription to the militia in different areas should reflect the area's population. That point is no longer valid, as the Government have decimated our armed forces. Fourthly, John Rickman claimed that there were defence reasons for wanting to know the number of seamen. The fifth reason was the need to plan the production of corn and thus to know the number of people who had to be fed.
John Rickman's eighth point may still appear relevant to the Government. He said that, in a time when many feared the disaffection of the people, a census would
indicate the Government's intention to promote the public good. It seems that John Rickman, that distinguished and neutral Clerk of the House, may have been the first Government spin doctor because of his idea of doing something that the people would like. He said that the true size of the population, even after the effects of war, was probably far greater than the usual estimates and that that knowledge would
- be the most consoling gratification to every lover of his country.
Two hundred years later, in their White Paper, "The 2001 Census of Population", the Government have slightly different reasons from John Rickman. They state:
- Government, local and health authorities, commercial businesses and the professions need reliable information on the number and characteristics of people and households if they are to conduct many of their activities effectively. This need is currently best met by conducting a census every ten years covering the whole of the population, and by updating the population estimates each year between censuses using data from . . . births, marriages and deaths . . . and . . . estimates of migration.
- However, over time, such data, especially on migration, accumulate inaccuracies, and a regular census is necessary to provide information for revising the annual population estimates.
Mr. Sayeed: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. There were, I think, two censuses while he was a member of the Government. Did he protest against either of those?
Mr. Maclean: Of course not. I paid no attention to them at all, because in those earlier censuses there was no question of my fundamental human liberties being infringed by the Government asking about my religion. If the Government did not propose to ask about my religion or the religion of my constituents, I would probably have ignored the present census. It would not have been at the forefront of my mind. Because the Government have been obsessed with getting the Bill through and getting the religion question asked, I and no doubt some of my right hon. and hon. Friends have been rather suspicious of what the Government are up to.
Why is that vital? I did not think that the Government were proposing any other changes, but my hon. Friend's intervention comes at exactly the right point in my speech. I was about to say that until I began to look into the matter, I thought that the only change that the Government intended to make was to ask the question about religion. However, when I studied the March 1999 White Paper, "The 2001 Census of Population", I found that the religion question is not the only change that the Government propose.
The Government tell us in the White Paper that
- there will be a slight increase in the number of questions compared with the 1991 Census.
- significant changes from 1991 in the questions proposed are: new individual questions on general health, provision of unpaid personal care, time since last paid employment, size of employer's organisation
- the Government will continue to consider whether or not to include a question on income, having regard to the risks to the Census as a whole in so doing . . . the Government will make final proposals on whether or not the question should be included in the Census itself once research into possible means of securing relevant information from alternative sources has been completed.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |