asked Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements will be made for parliamentary scrutiny of the operation of the new Statistics Board.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity, albeit at a somewhat later hour than I had anticipated, to return to an issue debated in both Houses during the passage of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill, as it then was; it is now an Act. As part of the Government’s expressed aim to restore public trust in the statistics system by distancing Ministers from influencing the production and distribution of official statistics, the Act establishes a new Statistics Board, with enhanced powers to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good.

Ministers have also made plain from the start their wish that the board should, instead of reporting to Ministers, be directly subject to monitoring and scrutiny by Parliament. The Act therefore lays a duty on the board to produce each year an annual report on its activities and plans and to lay that report before the UK Parliament and the devolved elected bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. However—and I say this quite properly—the Act is silent on the arrangements that each Parliament or Assembly may wish to make. The setting up of committees has traditionally been a matter for each House to decide for itself after discussion between the usual channels.

The issue that I wish to bring back to the House this evening is whether the monitoring and scrutiny of the Statistics Board’s reports by the UK Parliament should be for another place alone or whether there should be, more advantageously as I would contend, a Joint Committee of both Houses to discharge that function. Noble Lords who took part in debates on the Bill will recollect that at various stages of the Bill’s progress that issue was discussed. As the Bill reached us, it was strongly argued in many parts of the House that the Bill did not properly implement the Government’s aim of restoring trust. This is not the occasion to rehearse those arguments—certainly not at this late hour—except to remind the House of two things. First, we in this House amended the Bill in a number of important respects, all of which were designed to enhance public trust in the system. Secondly, when the Bill was returned to another place, almost all of our amendments were accepted in substance. Even though Ministers had resisted the amendments here, they decided in the event to advise the other place to accept them. Indeed, in one respect they went further. The Prime Minister himself announced a very welcome shortening of the time allowed to Ministers for the pre-release of statistics, for which we had argued long and hard.

That was an admirable example of the revising function of this House. A principal reason for that success was that a number of noble Lords—and I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Moser, in his place this evening—have a long experience and great expertise in the subject matter of the Bill and they deployed that to great effect in our debates.

The argument for a Joint Select Committee of both Houses has actually been acknowledged by Ministers. On 16 January this year, the Minister in charge of the Bill in another place, John Healey, who was then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said:

“I see some merit in the proposal for a Joint Committee of the two Houses, although it is not a matter for me as a Minister. It would enable both Houses’ expertise and interest in such matters to be played in, and it would allow their breadth and depth of expertise to play a part in the strong and proper scrutiny of the system”.

I could not have put it better myself.

Nevertheless the honourable Member rejected the idea because,

“it would not assist in achieving the overall objectives of the Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, Statistics and Registration Service Bill Committee, 16/01/07; cols. 67-69.]

I found that a very difficult argument to understand.

Perhaps I should say a brief word about Joint Committees. Although most committees of Parliament are set up by the two Houses separately and their roles and purposes can differ markedly, Joint Committees have a long history. That excellent book How Parliament Works, by Rogers and Walters, points out that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments goes back many years. More recently, there have been rather more Joint Committees. For example, there were the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which reported in 1999, and the Joint Committee on Conventions, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham of Felling, which reported in November last year. It is common ground that both those committees earned high praise for the clarity and wisdom that they brought to their respective tasks.

Perhaps a closer analogy of what I am arguing for is the Joint Committee on Human Rights. This is an ongoing committee of both Houses and the experience of that committee’s work has shown that it is valued by both Houses. It is of relevance—I say this in passing—that the then Leader in another place, the right honourable Margaret Beckett, did not announce a Joint Committee on Human Rights until after the Human Rights Bill had received Royal Assent. It is certainly not too late, therefore, for the same to happen with the statistics Bill, yet I sense that Ministers still seem chary of a Joint Committee on statistics.

One reason for that could be that for some years, statistics have been a Treasury responsibility. A sub-committee of the Treasury Select Committee of another place reported on the subject. However, on 1 April, that responsibility moves from the Treasury across to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury will no longer be in charge. That was one of the substantial amendments which we argued for and passed in this House and which was accepted in another place. Therefore, I think the argument that this should be done by a Treasury committee now disappears. It will have to be another committee. Happily, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who will reply to this debate, represents both the Treasury and the Cabinet Office in this House, so we are very pleased to see him and there will be no change for him.

But fresh in everybody’s minds must be the recent pre-legislative Joint Committees on human tissue and embryos and on climate change. I was very privileged to serve on the former—the Joint Committee on human tissue and embryos—and I was very impressed by the different expertise that the Members from each House brought to the task and how they complemented each other. Their expertise was not the same. There was also a distinct reluctance to become involved in anything of the nature of party politics. At the other end there is some grandstanding from time to time in Select Committees, but that does not happen in a Joint Committee. I argue that those are good examples of a Joint Committee and that such a committee would be entirely appropriate to scrutinise statistics. So my own experience has strengthened my view that the committee that will be set up to scrutinise the work of the Statistics Board should also be a Joint Committee of both Houses.

I wish to refer to two other matters only. The chairman of the Statistics Commission which hands over to the board on 1 April, Professor David Rhind, sent a statement to me yesterday and I have his permission to read it. He said:

“The Statistics Commission believes that the success of the new statutory arrangements will depend in no small measure on close scrutiny by a suitable Parliamentary committee. And whilst we recognise that the form of scrutiny is a matter for Parliament itself, any new committee will need to be able to draw on a wide spectrum of relevant knowledge in order to fully engage with a field as all-embracing as official statistics”.

I emphasise the words,

“a wide spectrum of relevant knowledge”.

I think that is something that we can claim to have in this House.

I mention one other point, on which I end. I can tell the House that after discussions with my noble friends here and in another place, my honourable friend George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, has agreed to throw his weight, and that of his colleagues, behind the proposal for a Joint Committee. Why cannot Ministers do the same?

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, for initiating this short debate. The subject—the future role of Parliament in the reformed system of government statistics—is of enormous importance and I agree with the chairman of the Statistics Commission just quoted that the success of the reforms depends considerably on the role of Parliament.

As we have been reminded, your Lordships spent many productive hours earlier this year considering and improving the Bill. It is worth reminding ourselves of a little of the background. It all began with the idea from the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, to find ways to improve public trust in government statistics—an aim crucial to all parts of government. The Chancellor’s aim received widespread support, not least in the statistical community, and was welcomed throughout the debates in this House, although we then had much to improve in the Bill. As a result we now have an Act which has every chance of achieving a better understood, used and trusted statistical system.

As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, reminded us, at the centre of the reforms is the new Statistics Board. We and the Government are extremely lucky that Sir Michael Scholar agreed to be chairman of the new board. He is a very distinguished public servant and has very wide experience relevant to the tasks of the board. He is now president of St John’s College in Oxford, equally successfully. That augurs well, as do the rumours that there is a strong field of applicants to serve on the board. The chances are that the whole thing will be in good and strong authoritative hands under Sir Michael Scholar.

So far, so good, but what about the board’s powers? They are extremely limited, which is where Parliament comes in. It has been clear from the beginning that Parliament will have a crucial role in the new structure. I quote from the Treasury document of November 2006 called Independence for Statistics: The Government Response:

“The Government expects Parliament to play the central role in holding the statistical system to account ... and expects that there will be full accountability to Parliament for the statistical system”.

Later, in response to the House of Commons Treasury Sub-Committee, it is said that,

“the Government places a high priority on the central role of Parliament”.

It cannot be clearer. What kind of role are we talking about? Of course, it is much more than putting questions to Ministers or laying reports before Parliament. It would be easy to conclude that the board would have to lay an annual report to Parliament, but we are talking about something much deeper. I shall try to illustrate it.

The board will deal with tricky policy and statistical issues going right across government and public concern. Take migration, on which there are many doubts about the statistics. Take crime—ditto. Pensions are very complicated. Population movement, health, transport, education and skills and so forth—those are the sort of issues on which government statistics, although professionally sound, get into a lot of trouble as regards public trust. They are the sort of issues on which I would expect the powerful new board to make authoritative reports. They are sensitive issues very relevant to public trust.

The reports and public discussions that will emanate from the board should not just be submitted to the relevant department—say, health statistics to the Department of Health—in the hope that it will do something about them. Much more is required. Those reports, which may be critical and sensitive, should come to some mechanism in Parliament from the board for authoritative final conclusions. Parliament is the final stage in the reformed system. That seems totally obvious.

I come finally to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, which seems absolutely right. What is the mechanism in Parliament that can deal with such sensitive issues? That mechanism—a Joint Committee—should have several characteristics. First, its expertise, knowledge and interests should go well beyond economic matters. The Treasury Sub-Committee is therefore not the relevant committee, even though the Treasury will remain important for economic matters. Even if it remains interested in statistics, we are dealing with a whole range of policy issues; social, environmental, economic and so on. The committee would be very wide-ranging.

Secondly, the committee will not deal only with simple administrative or even financial issues. It will deal with very tricky and often technical issues to do with statistics. Therefore, it will need all the expertise in those fields to deal in depth with such issues; otherwise it will fail the role of the new board.

Thirdly, and following from that, it seems obvious that it would be a mistake for such a committee to be limited to the other place. It is obvious from all that we have seen in the past 12 months as the reforms have made their way through the two Houses that there is a great deal of expertise and interest in this House. It seems to me self-evident not only that there should be a very authoritative Select Committee but that it should be of both Houses.

Moreover, although I speak as a statistician, I do not think that this is a tricky issue, even politically. Such a committee could help the Government and Opposition; it could certainly help the new Minister, Mr Miliband, who now has the residual responsibility for statistics. It will be crucial in giving genuine power to the new board. I think I can speak for the statistical community in saying that it will also be crucial for the whole reforms to make sense for statisticians and how they serve the Government and society. I strongly support the argument for a Joint Committee in this area.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for introducing the debate. There is almost a tradition in Parliament whereby we spend huge amounts of time discussing an issue and we feel very strongly about it and then the lighthouse beam of our attention goes to something else and we forget what we were worried about six months ago. We forget what we said during proceedings on a Bill and we forget to ask whether it is being implemented in the way that we wished it to be. It is important and timely for us to discuss this now. As a start, it is worth reminding ourselves, as previous speakers have, about the importance of statistics to society. If people are to understand the society in which they live and the public policy response to it, it is vital that they understand the factual basis of that policy which, in many cases, is based on the underlying statistics.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the evidence that we had when the Statistics and Registration Service Bill was going through the House. We heard that only a small minority of the population believes any statistics issued by the Government. Therefore, public trust in public policy is reduced. The Bill created a new framework about which we had many doubts as it went through the House. Although we amended it, a number of those doubts remained even as the Bill was passed.

Therefore, it is important for those broad reasons that parliamentary scrutiny of the work of the Statistics Board is adequate and effective. As the noble Lord, Lord Moser, said, this is not one of those cases where Parliament is going to look just at a dry annual report, although it will need to look at the annual report of the Statistics Board for some of the reasons that we spent some time in debates on the Bill worrying about. For example, is the role of the chairman, vis-à-vis the National Statistician, working out in the way that we hoped that it might, but feared it might not? Are the resources adequate for the job in hand? Are the priorities right? Are there any other constraints in terms of ministerial activity and involvement that in some way reduce the effectiveness of the board? Those are the mechanical matters that flow from the annual report but which are crucial if the board is to do its job properly.

The other role which a Joint Committee and Parliament have to play, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Moser, referred, relates to the way in which the board, the Government and Parliament look at statistics in relation to sensitive public policy areas. The noble Lord, Lord Moser, mentioned migration, population, health and crime as examples where the way in which statistics are produced and reported matters terrifically in terms of public perceptions of the issue. An example from the newspapers yesterday was regarding the production by the Office for National Statistics of some population figures. The headline in the Guardian stated:

“Forecasters say UK population may grow to 108m by 2081”.

That is a pretty alarming figure. The headline could equally have said, “Forecasters say UK population may grow to 63m by 2081”, because the Office for National Statistics said there was a range of possibilities and, needless to say, the newspapers took the most alarmist figure. That is not unusual, but in issues such as this—crime is another—where figures produced in good faith by the Office for National Statistics or a department can be used in an alarmist way, it is important that there is another body that can analyse the figures and ensure that there is a counterpoint to the way that the newspapers report them. Parliament is that body, because it will be able to command more coverage, and more respect in some ways, than a simple report by a government department or a set of statistics. This second area regarding the need for a committee and Parliament to make sure that statistics produced by the Statistics Board and departments are treated properly, and that there is proper understanding of the statistics, is hugely important.

How is this best done? The straightforward way would have been to carry on with a House of Commons committee. A sub-committee of the Treasury Select Committee will not do any more. It would make no logical sense, given that the Treasury has no ongoing responsibility for statistics. It would send out completely the wrong message, given the lengths to which we went to ensure that the Treasury was no longer in charge, if somehow responsibility reverted to the Treasury Select Committee. I know from colleagues on the committee that being on the Treasury Select Committee is an onerous job. It is a very political committee and is wholly unsuited to the role we are talking about.

The two main arguments for having a Joint Committee have already been expressed extremely well. First, in your Lordships’ House there is obviously tremendous expertise in this area which may rest in a number of individuals, of whom the noble Lord, Lord Moser, is one. Given the composition of your Lordships’ House and the fact that we tend to have people coming in with experience of the public services, academia and other disciplines relevant to statistics, we are likely to have for a longer period expertise in this area that can be brought to bear on this issue.

The other relevant feature of your Lordships’ House has to do with attitude and the way that committees deal with issues. As I said, the Treasury Select Committee is very political. Committees in your Lordships’ House tend to be less political. I am sure that in our parliamentary scrutiny of statistics we try to shine a light in a non-partisan way on issues as they arise. I think that your Lordships’ House would help very much in that respect.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said that his Treasury spokesman in the Commons supported the idea of a Joint Committee. The Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in another place—indeed, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats—is also supportive of a Joint Committee of both Houses on this issue. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to agree that it is a very splendid idea.

My Lords, as is inevitable on a Thursday evening in the middle of winter, we are a rather select band who have gathered here this evening to debate a very important topic. First, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to this group of anoraks on statistics, who gather together from time to time. I am of course indebted to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding for his continuing interest in how our arrangements for statistics will work in practice and, in particular, how the parliamentary scrutiny arrangements will work.

My noble friend has been unwavering in his conviction that the new Statistics Board should be overseen by a Joint Committee of both Houses. As we have heard, he received the support of all Benches in this House during the passage of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill and, as we have also heard, he had the support of both my honourable and right honourable friends in another place and also that of the Liberal Democrats, both declarations of support having been more recently affirmed and strengthened.

It is important to know what the Government’s position is and we are looking forward to hearing what the Minister says later. As we heard from my noble friend Lord Jenkin, when Mr John Healey was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, he seemed to be rather encouraging about the idea of a Joint Committee but then said that he was unconvinced. More recently, we have heard a slightly harder line emanating from his successor, so it will be very interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about the Government’s position.

When the Statistics and Registration Service Bill was debated last year, there was general support for the creation of the Statistics Board. We certainly had our differences on the detailed application of the policy and, as other noble Lords have said this evening, we were pleased that during its passage in your Lordships’ House we improved the Bill considerably.

What united us when we approached that Bill was a concern, verging on despair, about the state of public trust in statistics. A MORI survey about two years ago found that only 34 per cent thought that government figures were accurate and 59 per cent thought that the Government used figures dishonestly. Reform of the system, including an independent statistics board with a wide remit across government statistics, was acknowledged by all as a very important step towards rebuilding public trust.

Of course, public trust cannot be restored overnight. We certainly hope that the Statistics Board will have some quick wins and that it will establish itself very early as genuinely independent and determined to raise standards among the statistical community. But there will be a long process, starting with a code of conduct, going through the assessment process and then on towards the stage when the Statistics Board will be able to call in for assessment statistics which have not been designated as national statistics.

We have to see parliamentary scrutiny as a part of the framework for restoring confidence—the Statistics Board cannot be expected to do it all by itself. The roles that a parliamentary committee needs to undertake are of two kinds. First, the committee must oversee the Statistics Board itself. There are many important issues that have not yet been satisfactorily resolved. I do not, for example, think that anyone regards the relocation of the bulk of the activities of the ONS to Newport as a complete success. Some changes may yet be needed. There needs to be a forum in which difficulties can be aired, even if those difficulties and their airing are not to the taste of the Treasury.

Another important area will be whether the budgetary settlement has in fact given an adequate basis on which the new Statistics Board can operate. When we discussed the Statistics and Registration Service Bill, the Government made much play of the five-year settlement made outside the Comprehensive Spending Review process. However, we never quite believed in the substance of that. A five-year settlement is good only if it is set at the right level, and as anyone who has experienced this year’s CSR process will know, those who settle outside the main process, when the final decisions are taken, tend to be at the bottom end of the settlement range.

We see a parliamentary committee as having an important role in assessing the adequacy of resources devoted to statistics and to the Statistics Board. The committee should obviously have a role in seeing how well the new board establishes itself in practice. It will, of course, have a role in appointments made to the board in due course, in much the same way as the Treasury Select Committee had in another place when the chairman-elect was appointed in the summer. The committee clearly has a significant workload in examining the Statistics Board itself, at least initially while it establishes itself, but the core of the committee’s work will run alongside the work that the Statistics Board will be doing to examine statistics with a view to restoring confidence in those statistics. That must of course involve the work that the Statistics Board does with departments, as the majority of statistics will continue to be produced outside the board and within government departments.

When the Statistics Board begins its work in earnest, much of its effectiveness will depend on how well it establishes its natural authority in the statistics world within government. It will also depend on how well it uses quiet persuasion to achieve its ends. However, even if it does establish pre-eminent leadership and constructive relationships across government to deliver results, I am sure that issues will remain that are not easily resolved. We fully expect that the Statistics Board will be using its ability to report publicly on what it has found. We therefore see an important role for the committee in examining departments whose statistics have been found wanting.

We know that permanent secretaries quake at the thought of having to appear before the Public Accounts Committee following reports by the National Audit Office. I hope that the new parliamentary committee can establish itself similarly in respect of reports by the Statistics Board. If a visit to the committee to defend non-compliance with the code of practice or the deliberate exclusion of dodgy statistics from the ambit of national statistics becomes unpleasant for permanent secretaries, that will enhance the status and effectiveness of the Statistics Board. In that way, the committee can genuinely contribute directly to the restoration of trust in statistics.

It is clear that I have in mind a heavy-hitting parliamentary committee. Noble Lords might think that my reference to a visit to the committee as being unpleasant might rule out a committee that involved Members of your Lordships’ House. It is not an overstatement to say that the style and tone of the two Houses, both in the Chamber and in Committee, are somewhat different. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, referred to this when he spoke. I would hope, however, that the combination of the tough and somewhat political style of our colleagues in another place would blend very well with our rather quieter approach in this instance to produce highly effective parliamentary scrutiny. As others have said, Joint Committees already work extremely well. We know that they work well on draft legislation, but they also work well on human rights and statutory instruments, which offers sound evidence that the committee will work well for statistics.

I should say that the work done by the sub-committee of the Treasury Select Committee in another place, chaired by my honourable friend Mr Michael Fallon, has done excellent work on statistics in the past. As we have heard, the shift of responsibility for the board from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office means that the existing arrangements must be re-examined. That, of course, give us a golden opportunity to leverage the skills of both Houses in the cause of improving public trust in statistics.

I hope that the Minister will not break the spell of unanimity we have had in the Chamber this evening and will commit the Government to a Joint Committee. I know that he will say that it is not Governments who set up committees but Parliament. But we all know that, in practice, the usual channels have a great say, and the Government have a large say in the usual channels. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

My Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, on obtaining this debate and introducing it in his usual skilful way. I feel rather like the new boy on his first day in class, particularly surrounded by those who have long experience of dealing with this matter in this House. I am also grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for their welcome. I am not sure that it will survive the 12 minutes I have to put the Government’s case, but I will do my best.

Other noble Lords will forgive me if I say that the noble Lord, Lord Moser, has a reputation unmatched in this field in the country. I was particularly pleased about his support for the appointment of Sir Michael Scholar to the chairmanship of the new body; that is great support indeed.

Your Lordships’ comments have been very valuable and I will attempt to do them justice in my reply. We of course share many views. The Government have always been clear that we expect Parliament to play the central role in holding the reformed statistical system to account, and that that role will be enhanced under these reforms. We have sought views in the original consultation document and in debate in this House and the other place as to whether there were ways to strengthen the direct accountability of the board to Parliament. The Government believe—and this seems to be the general view—that it is primarily for Parliament to decide for itself the arrangements it wishes to make to scrutinise the new Statistics Board. Of course, the noble Baroness is right: the Government will obviously have a say in that decision.

Noble Lords will of course know, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned, that the residual ministerial responsibilities for the system are transferred to the Cabinet Office. One effect of this transfer is that responsibility for scrutinising the statistical system and the operations of the Statistics Board in the other place will transfer from the Treasury Select Committee to the Public Administration Select Committee. This reflects the generally accepted principle that parliamentary oversight of public bodies falls to the committee responsible for oversight of the home department.

The nub of this debate is the idea—widely supported around the House this evening, I concede—of a Joint Committee of both Houses being the relevant committee for the new commission. I am afraid that we cannot share the enthusiasm shown for this model, for a number of reasons which I will attempt to set out in the remaining time.

What should be the parliamentary mechanism for scrutinising this new set-up? As noble Lords are aware, under the new arrangements the board will report directly to Parliament, not to a Minister. The onus will be on Parliament to take an active interest in and respond to the reports that the board makes to it. We feel that such a committee—a Joint Committee of both Houses—would replicate what departmental and other Select Committees are already empowered to do.

We expect the Public Administration Select Committee to be the proper committee to scrutinise the operations of the board and the wider statistical system in the other place. It should be remembered that the departmental committees in the other place will continue to scrutinise statistics that relate to their areas of interest, and we have had references to some of those areas this evening. For example, crime statistics will be scrutinised by the Home Affairs Committee. The relevant committees in this House will be able to continue their valuable work in scrutinising statistics that relate to their areas of interest, including the Economic Affairs Committee.

We believe that the Public Administration Select Committee of another place will be able to take the cross-departmental, strategic view of the statistical system that noble Lords argue is so necessary to the scrutiny of the new Statistics Board. We feel that one of the advantages of the transfer of residual responsibilities from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office is that the scrutiny of the statistical system falls naturally to the Cabinet Office’s committee. The Cabinet Office has an overarching strategic view across government, and we think that not to choose that Select Committee would be unnecessarily to unpick one of the key advantages of this transfer of responsibilities. The Public Administration Select Committee will be able to call the chair of the Statistics Board to give evidence to it as well as the National Statistician, as at present. It will be able to take a cross-departmental strategic view of the statistical system, which is one of the advantages of the transfer.

We have always said that we see Parliament’s role as central to the successful implementation of these reforms, and we trust that the Public Administration Select Committee will gain a lot of its practical authority from having the active interest of MPs behind it. We agree with the noble Baroness that the Treasury Select Committee in the other place has done an excellent job in holding the system to account, despite having many other areas of responsibility.

In its report on the Government’s reforms, the committee expressed the wish that it would retain responsibility for scrutiny of the statistical system under the new arrangements, even though residual ministerial responsibilities have been transferred to the Cabinet Office. It shows that the committee considered the level of resource and attention it could apply to the scrutiny of the system.

My Lords, when was that comment made? That is not the information that I have. Mr Fallon told me expressly that he supported the idea of a Joint Committee of both Houses.

My Lords, I shall try to have the answer for the noble Lord before the end of my speech. If I do not get it, I shall write to him.

We believe that the Public Administration Select Committee will be able to take the cross-departmental strategic view.

Why not a Joint Committee of both Houses? The precedent referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We think there are some distinctions to be made. It is the only really comparable example, but one of the main reasons why that committee was created was that neither House had much of a track record of effective scrutiny of human rights. That is not true for statistics. Our second reason is that we can see no justification for undermining the overriding principle of departmental scrutiny. I shall not go into the issue of what the previous Financial Secretary said; that has been debated already. Of course, the depth of knowledge and wisdom shown by noble Lords has created the high-class debates that we have had. As I said earlier, it is for Parliament to decide what to do. It is for this House to decide how to make best use of the knowledge and expertise of its Members in its own arrangements for scrutinising the statistics system.

Of course, noble Lords are more than adept, using all the procedures available to them, to scrutinise the activity of all branches of government. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moser, that enhanced scrutiny is absolutely crucial to the success or otherwise of this undertaking. We know that Select Committees need and often have their own expert advisers, and there is no reason to believe that that would not occur if the Public Administration Select Committee was the scrutiny committee here. We also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that the Committee needs to be strong and must hold departments to account. If I may, I shall convey that message strongly from this House to the Leader in another place.

We are not persuaded that in this instance a Joint Committee of both Houses is the best answer. As I said, it is for Parliament to make up its mind whether that is what it wants. I shall end by answering one or two points that have been made. We are grateful for the offer of free expert advice from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and of course there is that expert advice to be had. We are not alone; we have had a good response from applicants wishing to sit on the board to give advice.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that the funding for the board might not be enough. I understand that the settlement for the new board was for £1.2 billion over a five-year period. I respectfully suggest that that is not a small sum.

My Lords, the noble Lord is new to this area. It sounds like a large sum, but when he understands the savings that need to be made and the cuts in resources necessary to achieve that, he might take a slightly different view. Let us not just be bemused by adding up five years’ worth and saying it is a lot of money.

My Lords, as someone who many years ago served in the Ministry of Defence, I certainly do not think that £1.2 billion is the largest sum in the world. We shall have to see whether or not it is enough.

The rejection of a Joint Committee—if it is to be rejected—is a matter for Parliament, but that does not mean that the Government do not take the need for scrutiny seriously. Even though noble Lords will be disappointed in the Government’s reaction, I hope that they will still believe that we are convinced that scrutiny is critical.

I just have time, I hope, to answer the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, a few minutes ago. The Treasury Select Committee made its comment that he asked me about in its report on the Government’s reforms.

My Lords, that was two years ago.

My Lords, if it was two years ago, I shall write to the noble Lord with the proper answer to his proper intervention.

I say again that it is for Parliament to decide how to employ the Select Committee process, to scrutinise the new statistical framework and to hold the board, in particular, to account. I repeat that each House is free to make the arrangements it sees fit. Noble Lords will no doubt go away today to consider further how best to use the expertise and experience available in this House. It remains for me to thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate and for making their case as strongly as they have.

House adjourned at 7.05 pm.