Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

The Minister used the word “pressurised”. Did she do so advisedly—“pressurised” as opposed to “called on” or “suggested”? Is “pressurised” defined in the Bill?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think I used the word “pressure”. Certainly, I was reading “pressure”, but perhaps I blurred the wording and said “pressurised”. I could equally have used “influenced” or some other word. I was trying to explain what we were getting at on the education side of things.

I have a couple of examples of student union pressure, which I mentioned earlier. Warwick student union held an all-student vote in 2020 to pressure the University of Warwick to fully divest from all unethical industries and release all investments. That included divesting from companies in support of a boycott of Israel, and divesting from international companies that are complicit in violations of Palestinian rights. There was also the example of Sussex University, which I mentioned a little earlier.

Official Statistics Order 2023

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, I will begin with the purpose of the order and briefly take the Committee through what we are considering.

The order updates the list of non-Crown organisations that produce official statistics, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Government and the UK Statistics Authority want to see official statistics enabling sound policy decisions and providing a firm evidence base for decision-making both inside and outside government. The role of the authority and the need for timely and high-quality statistics were never more evident than during the Covid-19 pandemic. The code of practice for statistics plays an important role in ensuring that producers of official statistics inspire public confidence by demonstrating trustworthiness, quality and value in the statistics they produce.

The order revokes and replaces the Official Statistics Order 2018, updating the list of UK non-Crown bodies that may produce official statistics. The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 established the non-ministerial department, the Statistics Board—known colloquially as the UK Statistics Authority—as an independent statutory body to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. The Act allows the flexibility to add non-Crown bodies to, or remove them from, the authority’s remit by order. The order provides an updated list of bodies whose statistical activities will be official statistics and so will be monitored by the authority.

The authority will work with bodies designated as producers of official statistics to promote good practice for the production and publication of official statistics, including through the code of practice for statistics; to monitor and report on the production and publication of official statistics; and to assess the treatment by producers of official statistics, at the request of those producers, against the code of practice and publish the results of those assessments. If statistics comply with the code, the authority will designate them as national statistics.

These changes are applied to UK-wide and English organisations. The UK statistical system follows the principle that the devolution of statistics should mirror the devolution of policy areas. This order takes the same approach to devolution as the order it replaces. Regularly updating the orders ensures that the scope of official statistics remains accurate and relevant in light of the establishment, abolition or name changes of public bodies. Section 6 of the 2007 Act provides that Scottish Ministers, Welsh Ministers or Northern Ireland departments can determine that statistics produced by non-Crown bodies are brought into scope. There have been equivalent amending orders for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

It is important to note that, although the order covers a wide range of bodies, which are listed in the Schedule, the vast majority were already designated under the previous order, so this is a very minor adjustment. It adds five new bodies to the list in the 2018 order: the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Joint Information Systems Committee, the Regulator of Social Housing, Skills for Care Ltd and the Trade Remedies Authority. It removes five bodies from the list in the 2018 order that are no longer legal entities: the Health and Social Care Information Centre, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority and the Natural Environment Research Council.

The order also alters the names of two bodies that were contained in the last order. The NHS Commissioning Board is now recorded as NHS England, and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary is now recorded as His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services—and long may he live.

The UK Statistics Authority was consulted in preparing the order, in accordance with the Act, and is content for it to be laid. My department has laid the order on behalf of other government departments in preference to each department laying an order for the bodies for which it is responsible. That is intended to make the best use of parliamentary time.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is important for us to discuss this order. It may appear on the face of it to be simply a technical, procedural or managerial matter, but it does have a political import.

Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP: Resignation Letter

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Thursday 27th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister has been clear that the Civil Service is vital to the work of the Government. The Government greatly value the work of civil servants who, together with Ministers, are working to deliver for the British people. The Prime Minister has accepted the resignation of the right honourable Dominic Raab, the former Deputy Prime Minister, following the findings of Adam Tolley KC, in a published exchange of letters.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome much of the Minister’s reply, but does she accept that the emerging pattern we see is not civil servants conspiring against their Ministers? The pattern documented is of Conservative Ministers bullying their staff, with three examples in the current Parliament, two of which led to resignations and one of which should have led to a resignation.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I cannot accept the conclusion of the noble Lord. Of course, as the Prime Minister said, we need to learn from these cases

“how to better handle such matters better in future”,

and a credible complaints process needs to have the confidence of Ministers and civil servants alike. Work is under way on that. Ministers and civil servants work together on difficult issues every day and, in the main, very constructively.