All Government statistics should be published by an independent body whose Board is appointed by a panel of designated NGOs and other stakeholders associated with the collection and use of statistics.

The Suspicion about Government Statistics

In a 2008 survey by the Office for National Statistics, only 36% of people thought that official figures were “generally accurate”. While a 2007 poll of trust in Government statistics by the European Commission ranked Britain 27th out of 27 countries.

Government statistics in the UK have long had a reputation for spin. In the 1980s, changes in the rules affecting entitlement to unemployment benefit led to charges that the Thatcher Government were fiddling the statistics. That controversy led to the inclusion of a pledge to create an independent statistical service in the Labour Party’s 1997 Election Manifesto.

A Statistics Commission was set up in June 2000 “to advise on the quality, quality assurance and priority setting for official statistics.” However, although it was independent of ministers it had no authority directly to influence any statistics and was solely involved in procedures. Similarly, a UK Statistics Authority proposed in 2006 and billed by ministers as making the governance of national data independent of ministerial control for the first time, had no authority over any statistics produced by Government departments.

The establishment of the new UK Statistics Authority in 2008 seems to be a clear and cynical case of ministers having an opportunity to clean up a situation but deciding for party political reasons that they did not want to do so as this might well prejudice their ability to use the organs of Government for their own party political ends.

What the Jury Team proposes

Other countries have been able to put in place a credible system for producing all Government statistics. For instance the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is responsible for producing statistics for all federal Government departments. If, for instance, an education or health department wishes to have a statistical review then it has to do this through the ABS.

This should be the model for the Statistics Authority in the UK in order to improve the credibility of Government measures. This would be a substantial dislocation with the departments losing their separate statisticians but there is no doubt that these people would be much more protected from political pressure if they were in a central ONS rather than depending for their careers on their superiors in their particular department.

Successive Governments have failed to act to provide the British people with a proper statistical service. The Jury Team believes that it is vital both to Government and to citizens that they have the most accurate and unbiased information available in order to make their decisions. It is therefore a priority of the Jury Team to sort out the provision of Government statistics, to ensure that they can never again be contaminated by party politics and therefore to establish a fully independent Statistics Authority directly responsible for all Government statistics. The members of the board of the Statistics Authority would be appointed by a panel nominated by seven relevant NGOs and other stakeholders who in this case might be The Royal Statistical Society, The Royal Economic Society, the Royal Society, The Market Research Society, The Strategic Planning Society, Universities UK and the Institute of Mathematics.