Memorandum submitted by Professor Roger
Jowell, City University
The two issues on which I feel most strongly
are first, the need for the UK to fall into line with other major
democracies by stopping the practice of extended prior disclosure
of statistical results to Ministers. As the RSS paper on the subject
reveals, the period during which Ministers in the UK have sole
access to new statistics is a great deal longer than it is elsewhere.
This allows bad news to be discounted in advance and generally
encourages leaks. It is inimical to the independence of statistical
time series.
The second issue is a resource issue. I think
it is important that Parliament should have the primary say in
the allocation of statistical resources. Otherwise potentially
embarrassing statistical series might end up being starved of
resources. Independence is much more likely to be sustained if
it is protected by all-party governance than by the Executive
alone.
May 2006
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