Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 12 November 2020
I am grateful to take part in the debate, as I was involved in the topic as deputy convener of the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee at that time, and it is nice to be back on the committee for a spell.
The background to much of the debate was the committee’s 2018 report on data and the quality and coverage of our economic statistics. I think that it was my colleague Gordon MacDonald who pushed for that inquiry. Good certainly came out of it, as we have seen a steady improvement in the data that is being made available to the Scottish Fiscal Commission in particular and, in fact, to all of us.
Access to relevant Scottish data from the likes of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has long been a problem because it and other UK agencies previously seemed to think only at UK level and did not think it necessary to produce disaggregated Scottish statistics.
On pre-release access, or PRA, I think that the whole committee accepted that there was room for improvement in relation to statistics being released more promptly. Society generally has become more transparent; even the UK—a country that is not known for open government—has moved in that direction.
In 2017, the ONS ended all 24-hour PRA for its official statistics. However, UK Government departments have not followed suit, and there is a particular difficulty in comparing Scotland with the UK because different bodies prepare the statistics in different ways in Scotland and the UK. However, from my perspective, having five-day PRA for some statistics seemed a bit excessive.
I think that most of us understand that there is an argument for both sides. On the one hand, statistics are a public asset and do not belong to any Government, so they should be released as soon as possible, but on the other hand there is a danger that when stats come out, the fastest and loudest media outlets churn out nonsense commentary on the figures, and more considered and balanced comments that come out later might be largely ignored.
Pages 53 and 54 of the 2018 report go into that in more detail. The point is made that no one is questioning the “integrity” of the figures or of the statisticians who prepared them. However, there can be the appearance of something strange going on if
“one set of actors—ministers—gets privileged access”.
I confess that, as a general rule, I am more interested in reality than in appearance, but I accept that bringing appearance into line with reality is probably a good thing.
There were certainly differences within the committee as to how far and how quickly we should try to go in restricting Scottish ministers’ access to statistics before the wider public gets to see them. My suggested compromise, as can be seen in the report, was that there should be a presumption against PRA, but it should be open to the Government to make a case for particular sets of statistics being treated differently.
I confess that it was a bit of a surprise to me that the then finance secretary refused to compromise at all. On the whole, this Government has been good at recognising that it is a minority Administration that needs to work with other parties. However, on this subject we were getting no movement at all. I think that, as a result, the committee dug its heels in, to some extent. Then, fairly late in the day, the Government did make concessions. I and colleagues very much welcomed that at the time, and we felt that that could have been an end to the matter and that legislation was not required. However, others clearly wanted to go further, so we now have the bill and this debate.
I certainly support the principles of increased openness and transparency, but I am not really convinced that the bill is necessary, because progress has, in fact, been made without it.
16:36