To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the report, "Accessibility and other problems relating to statistics used by social scientists", prepared by Professor Benjamin for the Economic and Social Research Council.

I understand that the Economic and Social Research Council has placed a copy of the report in the Library. Officials have prepared a detailed response, which has been sent to the commissioning bodies. This concludes that many of Professor Benjamin's criticisms are unfounded and based on factual inaccuracies and have been made without knowledge of the full range of publications and outputs. A copy of the full response has been placed in the Library.