One story that has not got much publicity is the final emergence earlier this year of the Statistics Board.
Whilst in opposition, Jack Straw, a leading Labour MP, campaigned for improvements in the quality and integrity of official statistics, and made a speech to the Royal Statistical Society in 1995:
… the [unemployment] claimant count … is now simply not trusted as a proxy for a proper measure of unemployment, and for good reason … The lack of data on key aspects of the NHS is wholly unacceptable. No figures, for example, are available of the number of hospitals closed … If ever there were a case made for a National Statistical Service independent of Ministers, it is the NHS as much as the current reputation of the claimant count … Democracy is about conceding power to those with whom you disagree, not those with whom you agree; and about ensuring that every citizen has a similar access to the information on which decisions are made, and governments are judged.
One of the pledges in the 1997 Labour manifesto was the setting up of “an independent National Statistical Service”. This could be seen as a companion to the better-known pledge to “reform the Bank of England to ensure that decision-making on monetary policy is more effective, open, accountable and free from short-term political manipulation”. However, whereas the Monetary Policy Committee was swiftly introduced ( S13 Bank of England Act 1998), nothing much was done about making National Statistics more independent, although there were a series of little noticed consultative documents and reports.
It fell foul, of course, of the Mandelson/Campbell revolution, using the full panoply of modern techniques, developed in the US and in business, to make the presentation of government policies more attractive, or spin as it later became known by its detractors.
There are several related issues:
(A) should you falsify figures in order to show the government’s record in a better light?
(B) should you use deceptive accounting practices and funding techniques in order to generate figures which present the government as more prudent than it really is?
(C) should you accompany figures with a heavily partisan commentary to present the government in a good light?
(D) should you be able to control the timing in order to wrongfoot the opposition, bury bad news, and present the government in a good light?
Standards in public life (and in the civil service) have not yet decayed to the point where (A) is a serious runner, although the electorate may not always be convinced of that.
(B) is a long-running series of battles. Until 1997 the forces of truth mainly won out, but since 1997 there have been a whole series of reverses, mainly on the PFI/PPP front – the governmental equivalent of the Enron accounting scams where expensive gimmicks are used to put government funding “off balance sheet”.
(C) developed into a battleground since 1997. The traditional approach had been to attempt a reasonably clear separation between the functions of “providing government information”, which was carried out by the “Government Information Service” (GIS), who were civil servants, and partisan political commentary and advocacy, which was carried out by government ministers. A key part of the Mandelson/Campbell revolution was to change all that and to politicise the GIS. Over time, the head of the GIS in every government department was replaced by a more malleable character.
This led to some public disquiet and in 2000, the government launched a collection of smoke and mirrors, known as the Framework for National Statistics, which was intended to restore public confidence without actually changing anything of significance.
However, matters came to a head in feuding at the Department of Transport, Local Government and Regions. The cabinet minister, Stephen Byers, had appointed a “special adviser” Jo Moore, who worked with the GIS. On 9/11 just after the Twin Towers had been hit, but before they collapsed, she sent an email to the GIS
It is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors expenses?
This caused a huge row. The following February the GIS accused her of a repeat performance with Princess Margaret’s funeral. She denied it and the row escalated with public statements by Stephen Byers, his permanent secretary and the cabinet secretary. No one came out of the row well and the main upshot was a serious loss of confidence in government information. The worry was that the ordinary voter was even concerned about (A).
Clearly rather more was needed to restore confidence, and more serious changes were introduced, culminating in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, which turned the Office of National Statistics into a “non-ministerial department”. Instead of being run by government ministers, it was to be run by an independent board, the Statistics Board, who in turn were directly responsible to parliament. A well-regarded retired permanent secretary, Michael Scholar, was appointed as the first chairman and the new arrangements took effect in April 2008.
Like all significant constitutional changes, it is unclear whether it will work. Much will depend on the behaviour of the Board over the next decade. The legislation has some serious shortcomings:
(1) S29 of the Act allows the government to give any directions it pleases to the Board;
(2) the critical pre-release Code (on making sure that the Government get the figures in good time, whereas the opposition get them too late to be able to criticise effectively) is still a matter for the government (S11);
(3) the (contentious) detail of how inflation statistics are prepared is still a matter for the Treasury (S21) – on the rather flimsy pretext of the impact on holders of inflation-linked securities;
(4) the Board has limited ability to bring more official statistics into the National Statistics net.
Perhaps more important, it is not clear whether the Board will be able to deal with the deceptive accounting practices – (B) above.
But if the Board succeeds in establishing itself, it will no doubt overcome these obstacles. Everything is to play for.
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