Speeches by Carling.

“When we discussed this with the board chair, his perspective was that, essentially, he had caught wind of it almost by accident.”

“We have asked the board; I am interested in whether you thought they were doing it.”

“Fine. That is helpful. You have talked a little about wanting to make sure that the board were sighted on everything. We have just talked about how perhaps that did not happen with the Labyrinth report. There was also this issue with the labour force survey and the declining response rates; we had a conversation about …”

“Okay, but why did you not take the Labyrinth report to the board? There was no discussion on it by the board.”

“That covers a few of the points that I was going to raise. I just asked about the Labyrinth report; I was going to go on to say that there were some really damning comments in it, which I will refer to briefly. There were comments on the governance and decision-making structures that are widely seen as ineffective in s…”

“That is useful.”

“Sir Ian, I have some broad questions on governance and the board, which I know you want to get on to, but before we do, I have a few questions on the cultural points. We have discussed the Devereux review and some the issues from your perspective with it. I will put it to you that that was not the first review or the f…”

“That is useful; I think that is all I really needed on that. Can I ask a separate question about an individual called Alison Pritchard? This is someone who we have heard mentioned a few times. She is still listed on the website but does not seem to be at the ONS any more. Are you able to shed any more light on what hap…”

“I could do. I was just processing the implications of what you said, Sir Ian. We had quite a discussion around the appointment process for that individual in the previous meeting, and some of us expressed concerns at the lack of an open process for that and the way they were seemingly slotted in. You were essentially i…”

“Is there usually a board meeting in December?”

“In that case, I will look again, but I could not find any board minutes from that month.”

“Okay. Well, I suppose that comes back to what one of the reviews said—I cannot remember which one, but it may have been the Lievesley review—about the need to modernise and improve the website. Perhaps that explains why I could not find the minutes, but I will have another look later.”

“I am going to ask you a question similar to one that I asked the board chair. In September 2023, the board minutes say that they were not aware of the extent to which response rates had fallen recently, which to me means that either the board are not being proactive enough and not noticing the problem, or that they wer…”

“Fine. So the particular problem occurred in August 2023, but you must have been able to see it coming. There was the long-term decline, and I think the board were very much—”

“They were aware of that. But the point they specifically made in September was that they were not aware of the recent fall. How do we reconcile that?”

“Fine. Just to clarify, I asked whether it was a case of the board not being proactive enough or not being informed of the problem. Was it the former?”

“I just want to come in very briefly, having now found those December 2022 meeting minutes. There is a mention of the survey response rate in them. Under a larger item about the TLFS and an update on that project, there is one sentence that says, “Labour market statistics have declined in quality over recent years follo…”

“Very briefly, was it meeting those three things? Was it setting strategy?”

“That is helpful. I am going to put my first question to you again, if I may, because although you covered content that is useful, it did not quite hit the first question I asked. Can you outline a little more what you think the role of the board is and whether it has been effective? I suppose, from what you have just b…”

“Thank you. That is all really helpful context. I actually asked Ed Humpherson, when we had him in front of the Committee, whether he thought the board ought to be split between the two organisations. Interestingly, he had the opposite perspective. One of the questions I was going to ask you was, “Isn’t it a governance …”