Draft Official Statistics Order 2023

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Official Statistics Order 2023.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. 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 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 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. From December 2007, the Statistics and Registration Service Act has allowed the flexibility to add non-Crown bodies to and 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 in the production and publication of official statistics. It will monitor and report on the production and publication of official statistics, and assess the treatment of producers of official statistics against the code of practice, at their request, and publish the results of those assessments. If the statistics comply with the code, the authority will designate them as “national statistics”.

The changes are applied to UK-wide and English organisations. It is important to designate the bodies as producers of official statistics to bring them within the scope of the code of practice for statistics. That will help to provide assurance that the statistics they produce are trustworthy and of high quality, and have public value.

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

The order also alters the name of two bodies that were contained in the 2018 order: the National Health Service Commissioning Board is now recorded as NHS England, and Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary is now recorded as His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. The UK Statistics Authority was consulted in preparing this order in accordance with the Act and is content for it to be laid. My Department laid the order on behalf of other 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

We have had a wide-ranging and engaging debate. In answer to the question from the hon. Member for Vauxhall about the Natural Environment Research Council, as I said in my remarks, NERC became part of UKRI in 2022, so it is no longer a legal entity and therefore ought to be removed from the order. Its removal was approved by the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and by UKRI itself. The Department confirmed that the Natural Environment Research Council does not produce official statistics, and engagement with UKRI confirmed that that organisation should not be included in the order.

I am happy to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley on his point about pensions, and I will ask the authority what the position is.

Question put and agreed to.