Speeches by Carling.

“It is more the recruitment process that is the fear for me.”

“Somewhere in that time period is what I am getting at.”

“This goes back to staffing issues. Sir Robert, just now you were using the phrase, “In an ideal world we would have done X, Y, Z in this process.” I cannot help but feel that a lot of these things are quite fundamental and basic, and it is not so much in an ideal world we should be doing it, it is a serious failure tha…”

“What was your perspective on the extent to which this issue of the declining response rates was being picked up by the senior leadership team and that it was being prioritised and actioned?”

“If I can just finish this line of questioning by asking Mrs Rourke, were you in post at the time, around September to October 2023?”

“Mr Humpherson, do you have any comments on anything that Sir Robert has just said from your perspective?”

“Did you discuss it as a board at any point?”

“Did you check that with the Cabinet Office too? You said you checked the role specification and the salary; did you check the recruitment process?”

“The other issue we have here is that Sir Ian, the previous National Statistician, also did not seem to have been aware of the issue of declining response rates until—going back to the Treasury Committee meeting—he said either September or October of that year. Irrespective of the board not necessarily knowing the exact…”

“I was going to bring that up later, Chair, but I can do it now if you would like.”

“The issue the Chair is referring to there is something Mr Humpherson said just now. You said that you told the board there were issues with the response rates in surveys coming down in March 2020.”

“That is very useful, because the board minutes do not mention any concern about it until September 2023, when they say that board members were not aware of some issues. Perhaps Sir Robert has a response to that.”

“I hear what you are saying there, but I do not think that answers the point. In September, the board was saying—I think the exact quote is something along these lines—that it was “Not aware of the extent to which response rates have fallen recently.” It cannot have happened in a month from August—or whenever the previo…”

“Did you discuss the trend of that as a board at any point?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Finally, roughly what proportion of the ONS’s senior civil servants are statisticians by background?”

“That would be helpful, actually. And equally in those inquiries, if we could understand why it was decided not to backfill Ms Beckett’s role, that would be helpful. I appreciate we cannot answer now given this is before anyone here’s time, but if we can get that in writing it would be very helpful.”

“Okay, I do not think that was clear to us but it does clarify why that person is still on the website. Okay, that helps. You also had a second permanent secretary between 2020 and 2023, which we covered briefly there, who in some places has been described as the head of economic statistics. Why did ONS feel it necessar…”

“The person holding the role, Alison Pritchard, was on leave of absence, so someone covered it and she then stepped down. Is that the sequence here?”

“That is a fair point.”