United Kingdom Statistics Authority

Michael Dugher Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Before I turn to the nomination of Andrew Dilnot as chair of the UK Statistics Authority, I would like to echo the Minister’s tribute to the outgoing chair, Sir Michael Scholar. As the Public Administration Committee said in its report, published last week, his work over the last four years in establishing the UK Statistics Authority has been first class. He has performed his important public duties robustly and with complete impartiality.

The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 was designed to ensure that we had an independent statistics authority—one that can challenge the use of statistics where necessary. This was exemplified only recently when Sir Michael publicly rebuked the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, for giving misleading figures to the Home Affairs Committee. I am sure that the whole House is also grateful to Sir Michael for agreeing to continue in the post for longer than was originally expected.

As the House is aware, the recruitment process for the post was significantly delayed when the Government’s initial preferred candidate withdrew. That followed serious, and in our view proper, scrutiny by the Public Administration Committee of whether individuals had the necessary personal independence to carry out the role. I would like to take this opportunity to praise members of the Committee from both sides of the House—in particular, the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), and my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins). The Committee has understood—and repeatedly stressed—the importance of independence in this post, and I believe its actions were consistent with the principle of parliamentary pre-appointment scrutiny.

I also welcome the greater role that the Committee played in deciding the make-up of the selection panel when the recruitment process was rerun, as well as in persuading the Government to recognise explicitly in the re-advertised job description that a key responsibility of the role is to ensure the independence of the authority. I hope the Government have learned from this process and will take the changes forward for all future appointments.

In respect of Andrew Dilnot’s professional competence, I agree with the Committee’s report that his extensive experience makes him eminently suitable for the role of chair of the UK Statistics Authority. As the Minister has said, Andrew Dilnot has had a distinguished career, most recently at Oxford university and in chairing the commission on the funding of care and support. He also headed up the Institute for Fiscal Studies for more than a decade. Indeed, this experience should stand him in particularly good stead. As we saw after the Chancellor’s autumn statement, the IFS is famously an organisation that is not afraid of criticising Ministers’ use of figures. I am therefore both satisfied—and indeed rather hopeful—that Mr Dilnot will bring the same kind of robustness when challenging the present Government’s continued use of statistics.

Throughout the pre-appointment hearing, Mr Dilnot expressed differing views from the Government on a wide range of issues, which is always encouraging. Those issues include the reduction of the pre-release period. It is also worth noting that when he was questioned about the Government’s happiness index, which costs the taxpayer £2 million a year, he said that it was “really rather silly” and “a pile of nonsense”. It appears that the candidate has fine commonsense in addition to independence of mind.

The post involves the significant responsibility of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official figures that serve the public good. Mr Dilnot has already made it clear how “absolutely vital” it is to have consistency in how the Government produce their figures. Labour Members agree that to make the most of our data we must be able to compare information over significant periods of time. This is why, of late, we have been concerned about some public statements from members of the Government about possibly changing the methodology used in producing certain statistics—for example, how child poverty is measured. The fact that child poverty is increasing in a way that undoubtedly shames the Government is no reason to alter how it is measured.

The appointment of a new chair of the board of the UK Statistics Authority is an extremely important one. We need a candidate who can maintain the code of practice for official statistics and ensure that Government figures are produced and presented to the highest standards of independence and integrity. We share the view of the Government and the Public Administration Select Committee that in Mr Dilnot we have a candidate who can rise to meet that challenge.