Examination of Witnesses (Questions 185-199)
MS KAREN
DUNNELL, MS
JIL MATHESON
AND SIR
MICHAEL SCHOLAR
28 JANUARY 2008
Q185 Chairman: Can I welcome the three
of you back to the Sub-Committee. Could you formally introduce
yourselves, starting with Jil Matheson.
Ms Matheson: Jil Matheson. I am
Director General for Statistics Delivery in the Office for National
Statistics.
Ms Dunnell: Karen Dunnell, National
Statistician and Chief Executive of ONS.
Sir Michael Scholar: Michael Scholar,
Chair Designate of the Statistics Board.
Q186 Chairman: Thank you very much.
You will be aware, Ms Dunnell, of our report into the efficiency
programme of the Chancellor's Departments last summer. Do you
think, in the light of that report, the Office for National Statistics
is sufficiently resourced financially to accurately count the
population?
Ms Dunnell: I think that in general
terms the settlement we got under the CSR was very reasonable
but, as you probably know, we have identified some areas where
we feel we need extra funding, particularly for the census and
for our plans for improving migration statistics, which we are
actually at the moment negotiating with several other government
departments. In that sense, no, we have recognised that in this
particular area we do not have quite enough money.
Q187 Chairman: Is this a bid subsequent
to the CSR?
Ms Dunnell: It is not a subsequent
bid but it is something that we have been advised to do by our
Minister and also by the Treasury to identify those departments
who will be key beneficiaries of the extra data and to see whether
they can contribute towards it.
Q188 Chairman: This is like Statistics
Canada charging departments for particular questions to be inserted
in the census. Is that right?
Ms Dunnell: It is similar to that
and, of course, we do that already; for some of the survey and
other work that we do we work on a repayment basis but, as you
know, the census and migration statistics are statistics which
are used very widely across government and we are in fact making
quite good progress on these negotiations, getting some support
from departments to top up our budget because it would be to great
advantage to them of course in the future. We are also asking
them to sign up to work in kind, working on their own administrative
registers, for example, which we are also getting very positive
feedback on.
Q189 Chairman: Sir Michael, I appreciate
Karen Dunnell does not report to you until after 1 April but what
will you do if she comes to you after 1 April and says that this
has not worked, that she does not have sufficient resources to
count the population accurately?
Sir Michael Scholar: The whole
question of the budget for the ONS will be an early item on the
agenda of the Board. My Board will be having its first meeting
this coming Saturday, February 2, and the issue of the budgetary
provision for the ONS generally is mentioned on the agenda. I
do not think we are going to have time to have a full discussion
of it on Saturday but I am quite sure that we will have an early
discussion of it, and our consideration of that matter will include
a consideration of the question you have just put to me.
Q190 Chairman: What powers do you
have, other than exhortation, if you decide as a Board that it
does not look as if Karen Dunnell will have the resources she
needs? What power do you have?
Sir Michael Scholar: We have the
power of representation, the power obviously to report to Parliament
and to its Committees. I suppose we also have the power to say
to customer departments "Yes, you want to have this information.
I'm afraid we can't afford to give it to you." That would
be one possible response to this situation. It is obviously one
which I hope we would not be driven to.
Q191 Chairman: You would say that
publicly, would you?
Sir Michael Scholar: Yes, absolutely.
When the Treasury Committee interviewed me in July I gave a commitment
to transparency in our dealings, and that is also something I
will want to discuss with the Board on Saturday when we first
meet.
Q192 Chairman: Karen Dunnell, the
ONS released new population projections in November stating that
long-term assumptions of future fertility, life expectancy and
migration are all higher than those made in previous projections.
Why have the assumptions changed?
Ms Dunnell: As you know, the population
projections are not forecasts; they are projections based on a
series of assumptions which we reassess every two years on the
basis of the trends, the very recent trends that have happened.
If we take fertility first, we have seen since 2001 a very obvious
turn-around in our falling fertility rate, so it is very clear
that the fertility rate has risen now for five subsequent years,
having been falling for many, many years prior to that. Our assumption
now about fertility is that the women in the population will have
a higher number of children by the time they finish child bearing
than we assumed when we last did the projections two years ago
and that is based on a real trend that is happening at the moment.
Similarly, with death rates, which is what we use to calculate
life expectancy, death rates have been going down throughout the
century and continue to go down every single year. This leads
to an increase in life expectancy, which of course leads to increasing
numbers of ever older people in the population. That is based
on very clear evidence that we have from our birth and death registration
systems. Our assumptions about migration are similarly based on
what we have observed over the last few years and, as you know,
what we have observed over the last few years is that immigration
has increased, emigration has also increased but the net result
of that has still increased a bit. So I think our assumption is
about 50,000 a year higher for our 2007 projections than it was
for the 2005 base projections.
Q193 Chairman: How much confidence
can we have in that when you told the House of Lords Committee
back in October that, with something like 90 million passenger
journeys per year in and out, the consequence of this is we really
do not have adequate data on net migration.
Ms Dunnell: Yes. The situation
on thatand, as you know, I have had a task force looking
at migration datais that we are dependent, particularly
for reliable figures on emigration, from our survey that we carry
out at ports and airports. We have already put in place some improvements
to that, things like increasing the samples of people who are
migrating that we interview by interviewing even more people to
identify them, and will shortly be increasing the number of airports
that we cover. So we have carried out some improvements on that
already. The real problem is that we are confident about the national
figures on the number of people entering and leaving the country
but what we are not nearly so clear about is where they actually
go after they have arrived, where they settle, so we have already
put in place an improvement in our latest population estimates
using information from our household surveys, because from that
we get a much better idea about where people are distributed around
the country. It is very difficult to use information that you
collect either when people arrive or when they leave because on
the whole they do not know where they are going, which is why
we are now backing it up with information from household surveys.
Q194 John McFall: Professor Rhind
told us when he came before that inaccuracies in the statistics
would impact on government in terms of financial allocations and,
given the serious shortcomings in the migration statistics, what
steps can you take to mitigate such inaccuracies?
Ms Dunnell: I have mentioned the
migration task force and that has a whole series of recommendations
which we have published, some of which I have just mentioned that
we have already put in place. Then we have plans to carry on improving
the estimates by various means. One of the things that we have
begun working on, for example, with other government departments
and with local authorities is investigating the use of administrative
data which exists in central government, things such as the National
Insurance number register, the various registers that we have
around children and schoolchildren.
Q195 John McFall: My point is really
the financial allocations and the mismatch element. What can you
do to mitigate that when you have found adverse situations there
and as a result of your task force have you changed policy?
Ms Dunnell: The policy about who
gets how much money is down to CLG and we work closely with them,
obviously, on the statistics which they use in coming up with
their formula. The formula does not only, of course, include information
about the numbers in the population but it includes other things
which we contribute to like the numbers of elderly or the numbers
of children, the numbers of dependants, things like deprivation
indices, which we contribute to and so on. It is not just a question
of the numbers but obviously their concerns about whether they
are making correct allocations is why we are working very closely
with them at the moment on our improvement programme, which they
are helping considerably with, particularly on helping us to engage
better with local authorities.
Q196 John McFall: How appropriate
is the definition of the population based on the usually resident
population in the context of the needs of the users?
Ms Dunnell: Traditionally, of
course, we have always based our population estimates on the international
definition that somebody who is a resident is somebody who is
here for 12 months or more. What we know since migration has become
both at a higher level but has also changed enormously in the
types of immigration and migration, mainly down to the ease of
travelling and our very vibrant labour market, is that there are
lots of different types of migrants, many of whom choose to stay
only a short while, either for work or as students or just for
gap years and so on. One of the things we have done there is develop
what is at the moment an experimental statistic, which is a national
measure of the number of short-term migrants. The difficulty with
this at the moment is that we can only do a split between London
and the rest of the country but, again, we are working on administrative
data to see if we can get a better measure of that. We are aware,
of course, through the user community and through all the consultation
that we have done on the census, that there is a great interest
in not only having the permanent residents who stay here for 12
months but a whole variety of other groups of people, whether
they be students or workers or short-term visitors or whatever,
and we are doing our best with the data that we have to develop
new measures of that.
Q197 John McFall: The Scottish Registrar
General has consulted the Scottish Executive, who are happy to
allow Scotland to move away from the combined census system with
the ONS in England and Wales and the Northern Ireland Statistics
and Research Agency. Does that concern you?
Ms Dunnell: No, in a nutshell,
because back in about 2003 myself and the Registrar, myself then
on behalf of my predecessor, the Registrar General, and the Scottish
Registrar General and the Northern Ireland one signed an agreement
that we would work together throughout the whole period to deliver
a UK Census which had comparable outputs, and that has built into
it commitments around, for example, the timing and the design
of the outputs but it did not necessarily tie us all down to doing
the census in exactly the same way, as long as we could guarantee
at the end of the day that the outputs were comparable and presented
in a coherent way. So what Scotland have decided to do is to pursue
their own procurement of some of the basic services for the census,
which we do not believe is going to impact on the findings of
the census.
Q198 John McFall: So that is going
along the lines that the Statistics Commission recommended by
placing more emphasis on the UK comparability at aggregate level.
Ms Dunnell: Yes, exactly.
Q199 John McFall: Will the 2011 census
be the final traditional census?
Ms Dunnell: My personal view is
probably not. One of the things that we do as part of our census
work is to look ahead at whether or not we will require censuses
in the future, so that, for example, in 2001 we did a report on
whether or not we would need a 2006 census. We are already now
planning the work to see whether or not we will need a 2016 census
and soon after we have done 2011 we will be looking at 2021 but,
of course, as part of our population work we are also looking
at the whole area of population estimation and whether or not
we can find improved methods to produce estimates every year and
it is part of an ongoing piece of work.
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