Speeches by Carling.

“You did check it?”

“You did—okay, that is fine.”

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

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

“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?”

“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?”

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

“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…”

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

“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?”

“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?”

“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…”

“Mine will not take long.”

“Mrs Rourke, I have a few questions for you around the structure of the organisation. To lay out our understanding at the moment: the National Statistician has been supported by three deputy national statisticians previously, and you are currently acting in the national statistician role. The economic statistics post ha…”

“About nine months, okay, and when did the previous incumbent step down from that role? I think it was Alison Pritchard. Again, rough is fine.”

“At what point in 2024?”