Speeches by Carling.

“That was before the subsequent exercise on culture that has just been mentioned. So when you found out about this in May 2024, you took it to the head of people and said, “Why didn’t we see this report?” The response was, “Oh, things have moved on; a board discussion isn’t needed on it now.” But actually things had not…”

“The reason I ask that question is that you clearly have a lot of deep-seated organisational problems within the ONS that need some work, and your work as the OSI is broader and covers lots of different organisations. I just wonder if there is almost a need for more board time and focus that might benefit from a split.”

“So we have from March 2023 to September 2024. Sir Robert, can you just remind us what you said just now in terms of when you found out about the 2023 report?”

“Thanks. As the Chair has said, I am just trying to build up a timeline here of all these reviews that say very similar things and when they happened.”

“In what month, roughly?”

“When was this done?”

“I just wanted to nail down one point from what Sir Robert said, Chair. In discussing the report just here, you mentioned that there was a subsequent exercise on culture. What was that?”

“Just for time reasons I will curtail that line there because we have what we need from that.”

“Notwithstanding the fact that you took that action and commissioned the Devereux review, I am not quite grasping why the board did not push back and say, “No, we should have seen this report and discussed it. We still need to have an opportunity to discuss this report because it isn’t clear that action has been taken o…”

“I am interested to understand a little more about the board’s input into the TLFS process and at what point the board started to ring alarm bells. Sir Robert, you said last time we met that the board had intervened on the issue. At what point would you say you became aware that the early designs of the TLFS were not re…”

“So at this point, are you saying that the board is not so much concerned about the design of the survey but about the timeline for switching over?”

“Sure, and I know that there is a reference in those minutes to the board requesting that the TLFS became a standing item to provide additional scrutiny, which was certainly the right thing to do. Since then, the board has essentially encouraged the ONS—as far as I can see from the minutes—to be clear that the final dat…”

“I am glad that you have brought in so much reference to external views on this because that is what is really critical here. Were external stakeholders involved from the start of the process, or was it a case that the board had to point out to those leading on it and essentially say there are not enough stakeholder vie…”

“I appreciate that is the later on stuff. What I am really keen to understand is to what extent stakeholders were properly engaged at the start of the process.”

“It might be helpful if you are able to write to us later with some more details just to the extent to which they were being consulted on the detail of what data needed to be included, what their key objectives are and what they are using the data for so we can understand if they were being involved early on. One more t…”

“But when would the board have gone a bit more nuclear? You had been raising these issues for months and months and nothing was happening. What would your next step have been? What was your next step?”

“That is very useful because that is not the impression that I got when I asked a similar question of Sir Ian at the previous meeting of the Treasury Committee. At that time, we explored the governance briefly and asked something along the lines of, “What processes have you put in place since to ensure the board is bein…”

“Did it express any concern? Did it write to the accounting officer? Did you write to the accounting officer? Did anyone just say, “Look, we realise you could do this, but really?””

“You did check it?”

“You did—okay, that is fine.”