Chris Bryant
Main Page: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)Department Debates - View all Chris Bryant's debates with the Cabinet Office
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Damian Green
We have identified 130 different data sets, and coming up with 130 different policy responses in one statement might be a bit much. More seriously, much of the information is new—20 of the data sets are completely new—and it seems sensible to consider the evidence, work out what the best policy response is and then do the policy, not the other way around, which is how the Labour party seems to want to do things.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
What a load of sententious, vacuous guff. Honestly, the Secretary of State should be ashamed. Has he just taken over the department for circumlocution and the office of how not to do anything while pretending to do something? The honest truth is that unless serious analytical work is done to check whether the statistics are a matter of correlation or causation, there is no value to this work whatsoever. Mrs Thatcher fell at the same time as Marathons were changed to Snickers, but I am not aware that there was any causal relationship between the two.
Damian Green
Behind the hon. Gentleman’s characteristic bombast is a serious point. He says that correlation is not the same as causation, so would he like to have a word with his Front-Bench team, who are demanding that all the policy responses should come now before we have done the analysis that he sensibly asks for? We are doing things the sensible way. Not only do his Front-Bench team have no polices, they appear to want policies before they have looked at the evidence. That would be the worst way to go about things. I appreciate that, in all sincerity, he believes that his Front-Bench team are as bad as I believe they are.
Mr Speaker
Order. Calm. My advice in particular is tendered for the benefit of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman witters from a sedentary position that he is very quiet. I think the answer to that is that it is all relative.