How can we stop the Ministry of Health censoring and sanitising vital mental health statistics to make themselves (and Ministers) look good? Legislate for annual reporting:
Green Party mental health spokeswoman Chlöe Swarbrick says the Ministry of Health should be legally required to produce a wide range of mental health statistics, after concerns were raised about a routine mental health report released years late and with significantly less data than it once had.And she has the backing of former Statistics Minister James Shaw, which should help.[...]
“It’s evident that right now there is a big problem,” Swarbrick said.
“Right there is not a legislative requirement for them to report that high quality and transparent data. Which shows us that we need to establish that legislative requirement.”
The government does exactly this over environmental statistics, and after National shitcanned The Social Report, Labour put up a member's bill to require statutory reporting of social statistics as well (I wonder what happened to that...?) But will Labour pass it? Or will they insist on retaining the power to lie and fudge to hide their own failures?
Correction: Shaw is the former Minister of Statistics. The current Minister is David Clark.
