Thank you, convener, and good morning to everyone. I will try not to lean too much into the microphone.
I thank the committee for its invitation to the National Records of Scotland to today’s session, which continues our important discussions on the detail and substance of Scotland’s census for 2021.
As you said, convener, there are a number of officials before the committee this morning, bringing together our legal advice, our senior lead on census policy and legislation, and, in Jill Morton and me, members of the Government statistical service. I was recently appointed as director of the NRS’s statistical services.
I am very grateful to the committee for initiating and working through its informal scrutiny of the work that we are doing to deliver a census order and associated regulations. As you will recall, there were significant challenges in laying the census order for 2011, resulting in the Parliament considering the order on a number of occasions. The current process of informal scrutiny is therefore valuable in enabling the NRS to work through issues with the aim of enabling Parliament to agree the census order for 2021 in a timely manner. The NRS is working to present the draft order to Parliament towards the end of this month, with the aim that the order can be placed into statute by Parliament in April 2020.
Working with the committee to help present an acceptable census order to Parliament for its consideration within that timeframe is central to enabling the NRS to land critical aspects of the census. Those include the recruitment of the field force, the finalisation of questions, which then allows paper and online forms to be finished, and the building and testing of a significant array of information technology solutions. Those tasks all involve procurement, contracts and significant on-going testing.
The consideration of issues such as how to support completion of the sex question, or of the voluntary sexual orientation question, confirms that there are areas where views diverge. The NRS has strongly welcomed the opportunity to bring up and discuss a number of issues with the committee through the informal scrutiny process, so that progress can be informed and recommendations produced.
The consideration of the census questions and associated support requires the deliberation of many factors, including learning from past censuses, the evolving needs of users, the need for consistency of outputs over time and across the UK, and innovation of technical and methodological solutions. Those elements must be drawn together to deliver the timely, high-quality outputs that are required by users, as census outputs begin to be published in 2022 and through 2023, and thus meet our shared objectives of a high-quality, timely census that meets the needs of respondents and data users.
I am pleased to inform the committee that, since the NRS’s attendance in September, we have continued to engage in person and in writing with stakeholders, many of whom are also directly engaging with the committee; we have undertaken a successful census rehearsal in three areas of Scotland to test our processes; and we have provided further written updates to the committee on a range of issues relevant to census design, including predictive text, ethnicity and details of discussions with stakeholders.
My colleagues and I welcome the opportunity to meet the committee today, as we work to deliver a proposed census order to the Parliament later this month.