§ Mr. Rookerasked the Minister of Transport if he will make a statement detailing any reduction or abolition in the collection or publication of statistics or reports by his Department since May 1979, indicating if such information is available from any other source; and what financial savings have been made by any such changes.
§ Mr. Fowler:The Department has reviewed its statistical returns in order to eliminate the collection of unnecessary information. As a consequence, some surveys have been discontinued or reduced in frequency, and the number of organisations and material has also been reduced. Furthermore, five overlapping traffic data collection systems are being reduced to two complementary ones.
We have already reduced staff costs in the statistics directorate by some £140,000 per annum. Further savings, also affecting statistics collection in other parts of the Department, will follow from the current review of Government statistical services, which is not yet complete.