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I hope that the Minister will be able to take on board that the importance of population statistics has been enormously enhanced for local authorities both because of the increasing in-migration and migration within the country and because of the effect that this has on grants paid by the Government to local authorities. That needs addressing urgently and thoroughly if local authority concerns are to begin to be alleviated.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, the amendment would add another category of consultee to Clause 3(4), but our preference would be not to have that subsection at all. As my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, there is a problem as to where it should end with regard to which bodies you consult. The most important thing is that the Statistics Board includes excellent people, who will lay the foundations for an independent board committed to excellence in public statistics and restoring trust in those statistics. Any mention of a consultation, albeit that it falls short of representativeness, runs the risk of tokenism. To that extent, we are unsure about adding to the list, although we completely understand the logic of what the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, proposed.
As my noble friend Lord Jenkin pointed out, I have tried to address the undoubted needs of local government to be reflected in the work of the Statistics Board in Amendments Nos. 3 and 4, to which I shall come later. We sympathise completely with what lies at the heart of the noble Lord’s amendment, but we are less than convinced that it is the right mechanism.
Lord Dearing: My Lords, if I could just respond by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding—
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, perhaps it would help if I made a contribution, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, rightly addressed the amendment for government consideration.
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We recognise the strength of feeling behind the noble Lord’s representation on this issue; he is supported in several other parts of the House. We share the view that it is imperative that the board is able fully to assess and address the needs of those who rely on statistics for local and regional level policy-making, which is the burden of his case. We recognise that the availability of such statistics is increasingly important and that statistics are required from neighbourhood level, through local and regional level, up to national level. As I indicated in Committee, we want a tight and cohesive board, with members appointed collectively to represent a wide range of interests. We want to retain as much flexibility as possible to establish the right mix of people to achieve that and to serve the public interest; we do not want to stipulate interest groups that must be consulted. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, indicated that that raises some problems in producing an exhaustive and comprehensive list.
I hear what the noble Baroness says, that it is a pity that subsection (4) is in the Bill. However, as I said in Committee, the reason the list exists at all is that the Cabinet Office must consult the devolved Administrations on appointments. Under the devolution settlement, the devolved Administrations have responsibility for devolved matters, including the production of statistics relating to those matters. By accepting this legislation, the devolved Administrations agreed that the board should have jurisdiction over devolved statistics produced by those Administrations. I am sure that the House will recognise the advantage of that for the development of the quality of statistics in this area. Given the constitutional responsibilities of the devolved Administrations for those statistics, it is right that the legislation should explicitly specify that each legislature should be consulted on the appointment of one member.
We recognise the significance of the concern about statistics for local policy-making. I bear in mind particularly the points made today on migration statistics and the difficulty that they produce for local authorities. The ONS has been working with local authorities and government departments to identify how new and existing sources can be used to inform migration estimates. In 2005, detailed case studies were started in four local authorities to investigate the potential for alternative sources and methods. Two of the studies were in London—in Barnet and in Hammersmith and Fulham. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, emphasised the London dimension of those problems. Reports on the completed studies in London will be published on the ONS website in June this year.
In response to the letter that was identified on the concerns of the London councils about the position, David Rhind, chair of the Statistics Commission, set out the action that he believed was necessary to improve migration statistics. He contested that it would be wrong to simply blame the Office for National Statistics. We need to change practices, and to obtain better estimates the ONS will need to receive raw information on people moving into and around the country, not only from local government and the department concerned but from other national departments in Whitehall: the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions,
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I seek to respond to the very proper cases raised: the general one made by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, and the more specific one of our present difficulties with regard to certain migration statistics which have profound implications for local authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said. I emphasise that we are obliged, and are taking steps, to improve the statistical basis for policy making in this crucial area; but the reason we have stipulated that there must be consultation in regard to only three board members is the specific requirements regarding the devolved Administrations in how this legislation works.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, will, therefore, not conclude that the issue relating to the devolved Administrations has been put in a higher category than those relating to local government in England; the issues are different. There is a legal requirement to take account and to consult Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; otherwise, we would not have been as specific in the Bill and I would have met the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, about the extent to which the legislation is specific. I hope that the noble Lord will rest assured that there is no way that the Statistics Board, when established, can be anything other than completely cognisant of the significance of local and regional statistics to its work.
Lord Dearing: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that positive reply. I entirely agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, made about migration. I have received similar representations. I would be glad to support the amendment relating to the functions of the board that he has tabled with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Newby. I ventured to make a similar point last time around. With the assurance given by the Minister and the prospect of what might lie ahead, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Noakes moved Amendment No. 2:
(1) Subject to the provisions of sections 27 and 28, the National Statistician is to carry out the functions of the Board, and in respect of those functions he is to be the chief executive of the Board.
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The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in Committee we had much discussion about what has become known as “the muddle”. This refers to the problems of clarity regarding the role of the board, the members of the board, the National Statistician and the head of assessment. Those of us who spoke in Committee and external parties, such as the Royal Statistical Society and the Statistics Commission, have concerns on a number of points, including what the role of the chairman of the commission will be vis-Ã -vis the National Statistician and who will be the public face of the board. Are the various functions of the board, such as the production of statistics as set out in Clause 17, carried out in the name of the National Statistician or that of the board? Is it clear that the board holds the National Statistician to account for her performance in carrying out the board’s functions, and so on?
Those and other concerns led us to table a series of amendments in Committee. The Minister said that the Government would reflect further and return to the issues on Report. To that end, he has tabled Amendments Nos. 29 to 35 in this group. These amendments were tabled only last week, but to ensure that we had a proper discussion of the issues on Report, I had already tabled Amendment No. 2 and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, had tabled Amendment No. 28. I do not pretend that Amendment No. 2 deals with all the problems we identified in Committee, but it attempts to make clear that the National Statistician will carry out most of the board’s functions in her own name as chief executive of the board. The amendment also seeks to ensure that the role of non-executive members includes assessment of the performance of the board’s functions and the people carrying them out.
The Government’s amendments, to which I am sure the Minister will speak in detail, address only some of the problems that we identified in Committee. I welcome Amendments Nos. 33, 34 and 35, because they clarify the separation of the role of the head of assessment and his staff. Amendments Nos. 29 to 32 go some way to clarifying the role of the National Statistician.
However, the respective roles of the National Statistician, the chairman, the non-executive members and the board as a collective body are still muddled. That is not helped by the recruitment process that the Government initiated for the chairman, with the job paying £150,000 a year for a three-day week. The job specification makes it clear that the person envisaged is a powerful and visible part of the Statistics Board, in relation not just to the board but also to the Government Statistical Service, which until now has been the preserve of the National Statistician.
I do not believe that the Government’s amendments are sufficient to remove ambiguity from the Bill. Nevertheless, I recognise that organisations can operate successfully even if they have defective constitutional arrangements.
Good, committed people are rarely held back by the problems bequeathed to them by the draftsmen, who do not understand how organisations have to work; they just get on with the job. The organisation specialists in the Treasury had a rather bizarre go at the internal structures of the Bank of England in the Bank of England Act 1998 and at the Financial Services
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I hope that the Government will appoint good people to the new board, who will focus on successful outcomes and, in particular, on the restoration of trust in statistics. If they do, it will not much matter that some of the muddle remains in the Bill. In that spirit of hope, I expect to be able to support the government amendments in this group.
I ask the Minister specifically to address the issue of performance review, which is dealt with in my Amendment No. 22 but not in his amendments. Does he accept that the role of the non-executive members of the board led by the chairman is to review the performance of the National Statistician, notwithstanding the fact that the Bill does not specifically say so? I hope that the Minister can answer that simple question. I beg to move.
Lord Newby: My Lords, the amendments in this group have become known as the muddle amendments. The noble Baroness described several aspects of the potential muddle. The government amendments deal with some of them but not, unfortunately, all of them. They deal pretty comprehensively with the potential muddle between the National Statistician and the head of assessment. In my view, that is arguably the least important element in this regard.
The government amendments do not deal adequately with the potential muddle between the function of the board as opposed to that of the National Statistician. Government Amendment No. 32 states:
“The National Statistician must establish an executive office ... to assist him in his exercise of”,
this, that and the other function. That sort of implies that that is his, rather than the board’s, function. It is therefore a great pity that the Government did not also accept proposed subsection (1) of Amendment No. 2, which states that,
- “the National Statistician is to carry out the functions of the Board, and in respect of those functions he is to be the chief executive of the Board”.
You could have sensibly gone on from there with the Government’s amendment but the government amendment starts off halfway through the narrative. I hope that, whatever we decide this afternoon, the Government will add that small subsection at Third Reading. It simply clarifies what they seem to want to achieve.
At the noble Baroness mentioned, in the amendments there is no reference to, and no attempt to clarify, the role of the chairman vis-Ã -vis the board. I suspect that this will have to be down to the good sense and personalities of the people involved. There may be a marginal difference in the balance of who becomes the voice of the board if the chairman is a very strong public figure and the National Statistician is relatively self-effacing compared with a chairman who is very
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Although some of the mist is clearing from the muddle, some remains. I hope that the Minister will look at that small additional amendment at Third Reading. As the noble Baroness said, we are grateful to the Government for at least having looked at and grappled with this matter. We accept that it is not an easy issue and, in that spirit, we, too, will support the government amendments this afternoon.
Lord Moser: My Lords, we have had many months of discussion on the Bill—public discussion and consultation and discussion in the other place and here—and much of it has obviously centred on the organisational structure envisaged under the new reforms. I have looked at the present version of the Bill and today’s amendments and have thought back a little to the concerns that I and others have expressed at various stages.
I start with the top layer of the new governance structure, which is Parliament. Of course, I understand that we could not have expected the role of Parliament to be described in the Bill, but we cannot conclude our discussions without going back to that aspect because it is the top layer. In future, the new Statistics Board, which the Bill establishes and which we have all basically welcomed, will report to Parliament, and this is not a simple or perfunctory role. In my view, it is not just a question of laying a report once a year for our discussion or consideration or the occasional question. It is absolutely clear that detailed and tricky issues, such as behaviour in relation to the new code, may come back to Parliament. Therefore, I simply want to put on the record the view expressed at earlier stages, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, that at some point we must consider this aspect of the new reforms, although I do not know whose task that will be.
At present, two committees—one in each House—go close to the subject matter. There is the Treasury Committee in the other place and the Economic Affairs Committee here, but neither is fit for purpose for the new Bill. The Treasury Committee basically deals with Treasury issues, but we have made it clear time and again that we are dealing with issues relating to all departments. The same kind of point relates to the Economic Affairs Committee, so something new has to be established if Parliament’s job under the reforms is to be carried out.
The subject that has occupied us most is the relationship between the board and the National Statistician. At previous stages, we have asked for greater clarity, which means, first, clarity about the role of the board. I greatly appreciate the Government’s amendments. I thank the Minister and others who have been involved. We have gone a long way towards responding to the worried views expressed on this matter here by the Royal Statistical Society and the Statistics Commission. These amendments go far enough to leave the rest in the hands of a very good board.
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We perhaps should remind ourselves of our concern that the board should be non-executive. That is covered in the Bill, but I still worry a little about the spirit behind the final stage, partly because of the recruitment process, which has been mentioned. It is not so much the salary as the three-day week which, to my way of thinking, does not sound very non-executive. It is very important that there is a clear distinction between the chairman’s non-executive role and the National Statistician's executive role. Thanks to the Government’s amendments, the precise functions of the chief executive of the statistics system—the National Statistician—are now clearer. For my money, I would still have liked a little more reference to her role vis-Ã -vis the whole of the Government Statistical Service or statisticians in other departments. However, that is not there, and I think that we can probably leave it to the new board to ensure that it is viewed as a single system.
On the whole, almost sufficient clarity has been achieved on that worrying issue of the board vis-Ã -vis the National Statistician. However, a lack of clarity remains—I do not know whether it is too late to hope for more amendments at Third Reading—in that there are references in earlier parts of the Bill to the board producing statistics and all the details that that encompasses. I would have preferred those references in Clauses 6, 17 and so on, to go, but it is probably not worth fussing about at this point. I shall no longer use the term “muddle”, as we now have a slightly demisted muddle and I am very grateful to the Government for what they have done.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, the points that I would have made have already been made by other speakers, but I want to emphasise the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moser. At an earlier stage, I said that the function of the board is not so much to regulate the statistics, but to regulate the people who produce the statistics. The noble Lord, Lord Moser, has made the point that if there are references in the Bill to the board producing statistics, that is still capable of generating muddle. The National Statistician, the department of which the National Statistician will be the head, the various departments and other organs of government produce the statistics. The role of the board is to see that they do it properly, to coin a phrase, and to scrutinise.
It would be enormously helpful if, in response to this debate, the Minister could accept that the board itself does not produce statistics and perhaps amendments could then be made at a later stage, or in another place, to reflect what seems to me to be an absolutely crucial point in this organisation. That lies at the heart of what the noble Lord, Lord Moser, has described as the muddle. I am perhaps not quite as optimistic as he is that that muddle has been totally resolved. It would be very helpful if the Minister could give the kind of assurances for which I have asked.
Lord Turnbull: My Lords, at Second Reading and in Committee, I was more or less a lone voice in arguing for a unitary board, so I am pleased that we
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The relative power of the chairman and the chief executive is something that statute should allow to develop over time. Think of the Audit Commission—there have been changes in the relative standing of the chair and the controller of audit at different times, to reflect the personalities and skills of each. I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moser, about the three days a week. I suspect that it is necessary in the set-up phase, when the chair does a lot of the interviewing of the senior people coming into the organisation. However, once it is in steady state, three days a week is probably too much and will bias the balance and prevent the natural evolution of the relationship between those two figures.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we have had a useful debate on one of the core aspects of the Bill. As the House will recognise, the Government never thought there was a muddle about the governance structure and the respective roles and responsibilities of the board and the National Statistician. However, in so far as through debate we have been pressed for greater clarification on the issues—we hope we have succeeded in providing it—the Bill has been advanced and strengthened.
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