§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that the use of the word "anonymous" in the Registrar General's blue letter has created concern as to the motive underlying the census, and that it is possible to trace the name and address of the person filling in the form once it has been handed to the data processors and programmers; and what steps he will take to make this impossible.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonI am not aware of any general concern about the motive underlying the census. The word "anonymous" emphasised the fact that its sole purpose is the compilation of statistics and that names are required only in the initial stages and to ensure that nobody who ought to be included is omitted. Names and individual 245W addresses are not transferred to punched cards or magnetic tape for further processing. The completed forms containing names and address are retained by the Registrar General under strict secrecy. Access to them is limited to his staff and for the sole purposes of controlling the accuracy of the statistics.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health why the names and addresses of the 10 per cent. of householders chosen for the census were taken from the 1961 census form and valuation lists; and why he did not instruct the Registrar General to make this clear to the public.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonThe sample selected for the 1966 census was not a sample of households as such, still less of named householders, but of addresses of dwellings in which all the households were to be enumerated. The addresses were selected in the manner referred to in the Question as the most suitable method of obtaining information about 10 per cent. of the population. The source of the sample was made amply clear to the Press and public at the time of the census.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health why the Registrar General's statement in his blue census letter to the 10 per cent. of householders, that the personal information they wrote on their census forms about themselves and their family would not be passed on to either local authorities or Government Departments, has not been honoured; what steps he is taking to avoid this in future; why the Registrar General's letter was worded this way; and why he printed the word, "not" in Capital letters.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonI am not aware of any instance in which the Registrar General's undertaking has not been honoured, but if the hon. Member will give me the facts, I will make a full investigation. The object of the Registrar General's letter was to re-assure the public that personal information about themselves and their families would be used only for the production of census statistics. The capital letters emphasised this point.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health in what respects the employment questions in the census were novel.
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§ Mr. K. RobinsonTo the extent that people were asked:
- (a) whether or not they had had a job at any time during the year preceding census day;
- (b) whether they had had any subsidiary employment in addition to their main employment during the week before census day and, if so, whether or not this was as an employee;
- (c) what was their main means of transport to work;
- (d) whether or not they had a job on the Monday before census day and. if not, whether they were registered at an Employment Exchange or Youth Employment Office, or seeking work (but not so registered), or unable to seek work because of sickness, or waiting to take up a job starting after census day, or retired, or not seeking work for any other reason.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health by what authority the Registrar General took out of the list of questions, as laid down in Schedule 2 of the Census Order to be answered by the head of the household, question 9(d) relating to householders sharing dwellings having exclusive use of sinks and stoves, and placed this question in the space marked "For Enumerator Use"; and why the name and address of the person responsible for making the return was also called for in this space to be completed by the enumerator and not by the head of the household.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonArticle 4 of the Census Order, 1965, required that returns be made in the prescribed form, and the forms, including the panel to be completed by the enumerator, were prescribed in Schedule 2 of the Census Regulations, 1965. Regulation 11 required the enumerator to enter on the form certain particulars, including those specified in item 9(d). The enumerator was required to write on each form the name and address of the person responsible for completing it in order to ensure control over the distribution and collection of returns.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that the information obtained from the census, when fully available, will be years out of date and 247W therefore useless in forming either immediate or future decisions; and what steps he is taking to ensure that information gathered from any future census becomes available in a few weeks.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonNo. The first results of the recent census will begin to become available towards the end of this year and all the main results should be available within two years of the census. I am satisfied that they will be indispensable as basic data for a wide range of decisions. The analysis of census returns is a complex operation and there is no economically tolerable method by which, with any existing equipment, the results could be made available within a few weeks. But consideration is, as always, being given to the problem of making results available more quickly in the future.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health to what uses the complete results of the 1961 census will be put when they are published.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonBy far the greater part of the results of the 1961 Census have been published for some time; and advance copies of the remaining volumes, now with the printers, and other census tables have been supplied on request to official bodies and research workers as soon as they became available. All this material has been used for studying the economic and social development of the population and has provided an essential tool for social and economic planning in the widest sense, in both the public and the private sectors.
§ Captain Kerbyasked the Minister of Health when the short preliminary report on the census, which was to have been published within two or three months of the census, will be available.
§ Mr. K. RobinsonAlthough there were tentative plans to produce a preliminary report giving a few provisional population figures for the country as a whole, this will not now be published since it has been found that such figures would not be more accurate than the Registrar Generals' estimates of the population of England and Wales and of Scotland for 1965. Resources will be employed instead in producing more quickly the detailed analyses which only the census can pro-248W vide. The first detailed county figures should be available to the Government in December this year and the first national figures about a year after the census.