CENSUS BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 10 June 1920)

§ THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH (VISCOUNT ASTOR)

My Lords, the last census was taken in 1911. Another is due next year. Hitherto a separate Act of Parliament has been passed every time the census had to be taken. We propose that this should be a perpetual Census Bill, enabling the Government of the day to take a census at stated intervals, as may be required. In most of its provisions the Bill is a re-enacting Bill. There are only three new points, which I will explain to your Lordships as we go through the Bill. Being a perpetual Bill, it is to be rather more elastic than the previous measures of a similar character have been.

Clause 1 creates the machinery for taking the census. The most important point here is that the Government receives power to 577 take a Census every five years instead of every ten years. We find by experience that the information available to the country, and available to the Government, towards the end of the decennial period is very inaccurate. This vitiates all our health and mortality figures. In order that they may be of any value we must be able to give those figures in terms of percentages. It is of no value to know the number of people who die of any particular disease in any area, unless we give the percentage they represent, of the population as a whole, and therefore it is absolutely essential that our main, fundamental figures of the population should be accurate. We find by experience that ten years is too long an interval. I could quote to your Lordships cases where the populations of large centres have been either over-estimated or under-estimated to the extent, in some cases, of 25 per cent., showing how inaccurate some of the vital statistics must be on which we have been dependent in the past. A large number of other countries have quinquennial instead of decennial censuses—France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, three of the Provinces of Canada, and other countries.

Under Clause 3 we take powers to create the machinery, and deal with the definition of areas, the setting up of staff, and power to get information. Clauses 4 and 5 deal with the preparation of reports, and the use that is to be made of the data which will be collected. Clause 6 is one to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention, because that is a new clause. Under it a local census may be made. We find that very frequently an area desires to have accurate information as to its population. It may be necessary for financial adjustments, and accordingly we believe that it will be of real assistance to a locality to be able to have a local census, subject to the approval of the Ministry of Health. Where a local census is made the expense would be borne by the rates, and would not come on the Treasury.

The Schedule is rather wider, and it must be rather wider in a perpetual census than where you have a particular census. It does not follow, because we take powers to collect information on the matters set out in the Schedule, that all possible questions will be asked on every occasion. Every time there is a census there may be a new problem before the country, and we have 578 tried to make it possible to deal with the needs of each particular census as the period arrives. The real protection in this particular Bill is that on every occasion we have to come to the two Houses of Parliament with Orders in Council. Information which is to be collected from the population must be set out in an Order in Council Presented to both Houses of Parliament. The only three new points of substance contained in this Bill, therefore, to which I would draw attention are—firstly, that it is a perpetual Bill; secondly, that we take powers to take a census every five, instead of every ten, years; and, thirdly, that we enable a local census to be made under Clause 6 if the locality so desires.