Speeches by Carling.

“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.”

“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?”

“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…”

“Did you make a point to the head of people that this should have been flagged to the board?”

“But you said that at some point the board should have discussed it?”

“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…”

“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.”

“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?”