HL Deb 17 December 1981 vol 426 cc280-3

11.18 a.m.

Lord Mottistone

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is correct that, consequent upon the Civil Service strike of last summer, it is intended that statistics relating to export between March and August 1981 will never he produced in detail, notwithstanding any harm that this may do to the vitally important export drive.

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, after the industrial dispute in the Civil Service earlier this year, the backlog of trade statistics work at Customs Statistical Office was equivalent to some six months' output. It is not possible to provide current trade figures and to recover the backlog within a reasonable time without a reduction in the overall workload. For this reason, and after careful consideration of users' needs, it has been decided to produce the export statistics for the nine months of March to August 1981 on the basis of a sample.

Lord Mottistone

My Lords, is it true that the import figures are being produced? Is my noble friend aware that exporters need these figures very importantly in order to be able to penetrate third world markets which are getting increasingly competitive? May I ask him to reconsider this point and make a real effort to see whether these figures can be produced? I am sure my noble friend is aware that a sample is really not good enough in these circumstances.

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is responsible for these matters, considered this matter very fully indeed, and did so on more than one occasion, and came to the conclusion to which I have referred. I agree that this presents some difficulties for exporters in particular, but I think that the difficulties that would have been created by following some other course would have been even greater.

Lord Bruce of Donington

My Lords, can the noble Lord explain the extent of the extra effort that would be required? Is he aware that to obtain any representative sample on which reliance could be placed for statistical purposes would also require a certain amount of effort? Is he completely satisfied that it would not be better, and in the long run prove shorter, for the actual figures to he abstracted? Is the noble Lord aware that evidently—if my information is correct—these figures are available to EUROSTAT, which reproduces quite a number of the export figures relating to this country? Will the noble Lord give the matter further consideration, since, as his noble friend said, this is of some importance to the export industries of this country?

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, I certainly agree that, if it were possible, it would be highly desirable to produce the figures to which my noble friend and the noble Lord have referred, but there are two difficulties. It was a question not only of providing adequate resources for the task, but also of practicality. For example, it was suggested that the extra work might be done by using outside computer bureaux or computer agencies, but that proved to be impracticable because of the need to preserve confidentiality. Added to that there is the difficulty of providing the necessary additional skilled personnel to undertake the necessary computer inputs.

Lord Bruce of Donington

But, my Lords, the noble Lord talks of confidentiality. Will he explain how in fact any question of confidentiality arises, since if the figures are produced they will be published anyway?

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, the need for confidentiality arises in transferring the figures from the pieces of paper on which they originate to the depersonalised information which eventually appears in the published statistics. It is necessary to remove the name of the individual exporter from documents relating to a particular transaction, for example, and that is the confidentiality element to which I referred.

Lord Mottistone

My Lords, I wish to raise two further points. First, my noble friend did not reply to my supplementary question so as to confirm whether the situation will not apply to imports. Import statistics are being produced, are they not? If that is so, if the Government can produce import statistics, why can they not produce export statistics? That is the first point.

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, it is the case that some of the import statistics are being produced slightly more comprehensively than are the export statistics, but the answer remains the same: that it is not possible to provide the additional service to which my noble friend referred because of the difficulties that I have described.

Lord Willis

My Lords, in the spirit of Christmas, will the noble Lord himself undertake, and ask others, not to use, the word "confidentiality", which has no basis whatsoever in the English language?

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, I have great sympathy with the noble Lord in regard to that supplementary question, and I shall do my best not to use the word again.

Lord Mottistone

My Lords, with regard to my second point, surely the argument about not going out to contractors with confidential information is not a very strong one, since to my personal knowledge in relation to defence services the Government frequently contract out under special rules. Is what my noble friend has said not an inadequate answer? Can my noble friend not say that he will look at it again, and does he not consider that his right honourable friend has something to look at, which perhaps he has not considered in the past?

Lord Trefgarne

My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that my right honourable friend the Chancellor has looked at this matter with the greatest care and indeed the greatest sympathy. As my noble friend will know, my right honourable friend has received a number of representations on this subject, not least from the organisation of which my noble friend is a senior official, but my right honourable friend nonetheless came to the view that, despite the difficulties, it was not possible to proceed in the way that some people were asking because of the problems that I have described.

The confidentiality point is a powerful one, because the statistics are produced by injecting into the computer information from a large number of documents which are presented in the course of the exporting process, and each of those documents has to be depersonalised before it can become a statistic.