Üjf199ÝOral evidenceÌTaken before the Public Administration CommitteeÊon Thursday 19 November 2009ÌÜjf27ÝMembers presentÌÜjf27ÝDr Tony Wright, in the ChairÌÜjf55ÝDavid HeyesÈKelvin HopkinsÈMr Gordon PrenticeÌPaul RowenÈMr Charles WalkerÌËÜjf22ÝÜjf50ÝÜcf2ÝWitnesses: Ücf3ÝMr David DartonÜcf1Ý, Director of Foresight, Equality and Human Rights Commission,ÜjyÜcf3ÝMr Keith DugmoreÜcf1Ý, Demographics User Group, and Ücf3ÝProfessor Philip ReesÜcf1Ý, Leeds University, gave evidence.ÌÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ1 Chairman:Ì Let me welcome our witnesses this morning for a session looking at the preparations for the census, in particular looking today at the suggested questions in the 2011 census. We have had hearings previously on general preparations for the census and have not really discussed the questions, but, because the draft census order has now reached the House of Commons and there will eventually possibly be debate and decision on it, it seemed useful to try to explore some of these issues at this point. We are therefore delighted to have Professor Philip Rees with us from the University of Leeds, Keith Dugmore from the Demographics User Group, and David Darton from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Thank you very much for coming to help us. You have given us some papers but would you like briefly to say something by way of introduction, each of you, as to what your perspective on the questions issue is at this point? Mr Darton, would you like to start?ËÜjf65Ý19 November 2009	Mr David Darton, Mr Keith Dugmore and Professor Philip ReesÌÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý Yes, thank you. As I said in the written submission, our major concern is the omission of a question on sexual orientation, or, more precisely, sexual identity. I can rehearse the reasons for this if you are interested.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ2 Chairman:Ì In a nutshell.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý It is primarily because they are a significant group in the population in terms of their overall size, and in particular we are concerned that there is a lot of self-segregation that goes on in this group in terms of self-segregating themselves into particular occupations and particular localities that feel safe, and that that may be very bad for the productivity of the country and for their own life choices, and you can only pick up that sort of information and data in the census at that local level, given the size of it. The fact that sexual identity questions are being asked in the future or in other surveys does not compensate for the fact that they are being eliminated from the census, and, of course, the census is the main source for the planning that local authorities and service providers do. Finally, we think that there would be an accurate enough picture of sexual orientation distribution around the country from the census in the sense that it would accurately reflect the sexual identity of people in the sense of being able to identify themselves in their household, which is a particular aspect of identity which is valuable in its own right. We are not over concerned about the fact that everybody chooses to identify differently in different spheres and so therefore it is a very particular measure but a very valuable particular measure.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ3 Chairman:Ì People are worried already about the size of this census, rightly or wrongly. Could I just ask you, if this is your proposal for inclusion do you have a proposal for exclusion to match it?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý We have a letter from the ONS that says that the reason they are excluding it at the moment is not because of a shortage of space or a cost issue. I think it is right, as I said in my submission, that in the end there is a political judgment to be made in terms of the priorities of different questions. Having said that, I think there are some_and I am hesitant because this is not necessarily our centre of expertise and I think you need expert advice_that on the surface look to us as though they might be candidates. We are not sure, for example, that the accuracy and salience of a question which asks people about their intention to stay in the country. I think there are two questions related to that. We have not seen evidence that suggests that that gives a very reliable estimate, so they may be candidates. We are not entirely certain that the bank of questions on immigration is the best way of getting at immigration questions, so that may be one area. There is another issue which is slightly separate, which is whether it is really required by the Welsh Language Act to leave a space in the England questionnaire so, whilst it would be inadequate only to do things in England, there is some space in the English part which I think could be utilised better and we are certainly not convinced that the Welsh Language Act prevents that happening, which I think has been suggested. I think, although this is a different part of the questionnaire because it is the household survey, that we might question the number of rooms question on the questionnaire because we are not sure that cognitive testing suggests that it is very accurate anyway and it is available from other sources. I think there are some areas and we are cognisant of the fact that this has to be good value for money and nothing is cost free.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ4 Chairman:Ì Thank you very much for that. Mr Dugmore?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý I am representing the Demographics User Group, which is on behalf of large commercial companies who use the census. I think it is probably sometimes overlooked that people naturally concentrate on central government's and local government's use and public service planning, but we as a group have been going for more than ten years and the census is an invaluable source of information for decision-making by large retailers and financial service companies and so on. The way we see it is that there are quite a lot of questions in the census which are of broad interest to almost all groups, and one goes back to a long history here of what has been asked in 2001 and 1991 and 1981 and so on, and then at the margins there are questions which are of perhaps great interest to some user groups but not to others. In our case, we are very interested in the broad demographics and social composition status and so on of the population. When it comes down to, for example, carers, I would have to be straightforward and say that that is not an immediate matter of interest to us but we recognise_and I also in the past have chaired the Statistics Users Forum, which is a much broader umbrella of census users_that there are a lot of people in local authorities or social services or whatever who are very interested in the carers' questions. I think it would be unusual for any user group to support all questions. From our own viewpoint we would not be immediately looking towards national identity or citizenship or numbers of bedrooms as questions that are of great significance to us, but obviously there will be other users who will lobby for that and ONS does not have an easy job of reconciling these conflicting demands. The one question that we would like to have seen in is income, which is of interest, obviously, to the commercial world but I think also to decision makers across all public services, and it was obviously a finely balanced judgment for ONS to make. We naturally pointed to the fact that income has been asked in several other countries for many years and has been achieved. We also look to the fact that ethnicity was a very sensitive question back in 1981, where I remember the Haringey census as an enumerator, where there was a lot of public concern about ethnicity but the ground was set and people made the case and it was successfully asked in 1991 and by 2001 it had become embedded. It would have been good if it had been done with income, which indeed is being done in Scotland, so that is our one particular extra if we were looking for one.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ5 Chairman:Ì How do you feel about sex?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý It is okay.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ6 Chairman:Ì That is the right answer! No, no. How do you feel about the argument about sexual orientation from the commercial world?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý I think it is fair to say that it would be well down our list of priorities. There might be some particular target marketing in seeking to define population segments. I certainly would not rule it out that some of the members of the group might say, That is quite an interesting one; yes, we are launching a new product", or whatever, and we are wanting to target particular members of the community", but it is not an obvious one for us.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ7 Chairman:Ì People write about the gay pound though, do they not?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý They do.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ8 Chairman:Ì That is a commercial_ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý Yes. I think it is of potential interest but not right up there in the obvious ones.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ9 Chairman:Ì Thank you very much. Professor Rees?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today. I am an academic, so I have no statutory right to demand anything in the census but I use everything that is in there and exploit it to understand what is going on with our population and our society. My submission put the case again for the income question. When I was co-ordinator of the ESRC census programme, which you heard about in June from my successor on this, David Martin from Southampton University, in 2001 we launched a strong case for including income, so I have repeated that. The essential case is that if you want a variable that distinguishes between people who are poor and people who are rich, ask them directly about the money they receive. A lot of academic work and national statistics work has shown that proxies constructed from other variables measuring deprivation in the census just do not discriminate sufficiently between people, between areas, do not identify those pockets of policy that need public action. Obviously, having suggested an income question, which I think the design of has been tested out thoroughly, it is not intrusive. The income question can be administered personally within the household and the husband can answer it A, B, C, D, and the wife can answer it A, B, C, D, and they do not know what their respective incomes are, so it is well designed for confidentiality even within the household. What would I give up if space had to be made and you were persuaded that income was a question to include? I think the new questions on migration are extremely useful; I will be using them, but I think they are not quite fit for the purpose that they are intended for. They are intended to fill the large gap in our international migration statistics but that gap is not just for the year before the census, 2010^11; it is for the whole of the decade. We need a robust continuing system of measuring migration better, so I would have taken the money from the budget and used it to persuade the Home Office to demonstrate that the e-border system, into which enormous amounts of money are being invested, can be used to generate statistics. They have not yet demonstrated that and I have been pressing them in other evidence I have given to the UK Statistics Authority on that in the migration report that came out in July. I think I would drop the rather awkward question about intention to stay. The people who I have asked about this feel it is awkward. It does raise spectres in their mind of are they going to be deported in the near future; is this a way of collecting information, which the census does not collect. I have absolute faith in the integrity and confidentiality of it and of the data that is collected, but people's perception is that this question could lead to unfortunate consequences. The other reason I would drop the intention question is that it sets a precedent for asking people about views of the future. The census is designed to ask what is the situation now or what has been happening over a year or five years, back to your birth date, if you like, so it is information that is relatively factual, whereas intention is pure opinion. I know there is a reason to try and connect it to the international passenger survey but I do not think that is the right solution to the gap in migration statistics. In terms of evidence on the value of the income question, I will just refer you to my PhD thesis, 1979, using a splendid set of income data from the US census of 1960, and demonstrating this point, that it is a much better discriminator of people in poverty, or, in the case of commercial organisations, people who are rich in income terms than any of the other variables. It is better than occupation, it is better than education, it is better than housing value. Income is a critical variable for analysing our social and economic fabric.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ10 Chairman:Ì Just on that, is there an argument though that says because we have not had an income question in the past that is a good reason for not having it now because we do not have the virtue of what you are describing, which is the time series that will give us the information that you have talked about?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý No, I think that is an argument that would mean that there was no innovation at all, so we would not have an ethnic identity question, we would not have had lots of questions if we had not asked them for the first time.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ11 Chairman:Ì Mr Darton knows about the future because he is the Director of Foresight. On the sexual orientation issue, so that we can move on to other ones, it did occur to me, thinking about that, that one of the big reasons for wanting census data is for public policy reasons: you want to do things with it. What I am not clear about is what public policy reasons make us want to know about people's sexual identity. We do not provide different services, do we, for people with different sexual orientations?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý I think we do potentially provide differently tailored services in areas like health and so on. I think though that one of the main reasons for knowing about it is to be able to assess the size of the population in local areas because if, for example, a local area is completely devoid of anybody who expresses a minority sexual identity the question has to be asked, is there something about the culture, the nature of that area, things that local authorities and local partnerships do have some control over, which is in a sense excluding quite a big proportion of the population and may therefore need changing in order for that area to be the most productive to get the best employment force it needs and so on. I think it would be wrong to assume that the census on its own gives you a direct policy response. Clearly, it gives you evidence that there is something that needs looking at. It gives you evidence that there is something that you need to target your policy development resources or your research resources on, and, with a forecasting hat on, and this is well known, we are going to be in a period of pretty tight public expenditure constraint over the next ten years. We have recognised in Parliament that there is a duty for public authorities to try and ensure equality, and it includes sexual orientation, and that steps must be taken where it is shown to end bullying, et cetera. We need to know the numbers of people so that that money is spent effectively. People see the census as a cost but actually these requirements are not being made for the sake of political correctness or anything else. It is because it affects real people's lives and we need to have basic_ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ12 Chairman:Ì We are not asking people whether they are short or tall or fat or thin or any of these kinds of things, are we, all of which would be fascinating to know?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý No, but I think there is a difference which has been recognised. Sexual orientation is one of the protected grounds in legislation. We have recognised that with ethnicity, disability and so on there are some characteristics where there is the potential for disadvantage or discrimination. That is a matter of public concern and that has been recognised, so I think sexual orientation is different in that sense, and if we are serious about that legislation we need the data that allows us to act effectively on it and to distribute resources accordingly.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ13 Chairman:Ì You mentioned health issues, and I can see that of course there may be_but we do not have separate housing, separate transport system, separate all kinds of provision for people with different sexual proclivities, do we? Your point about if you find out there are not many in an area, suggests a kind of cultural repression. It may indicate there are not any.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý Yes, I think it may. It suggests areas for further investigation, but I think the same point could be made that we do not have separate services necessarily for people of different religions, yet we ask about religion. We do not necessarily in all areas have separate provision for groups that are measured in the census. What this is doing is directing you to ask the question: is it important enough that you need to start thinking about different services?ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ14 Mr Walker:Ì Mr Darton, why can you not just leave gay people alone, just let them get on with their lives? We all here do surgeries. If someone was to walk into my surgery and I said, By the way, before we start, are you gay?", I would expect to be told to bugger off_sorry, to get lost, or go and jump off a cliff. Why can you not just relax about this? We are all pretty relaxed about it. Why are you not relaxed about it?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý Because that is not what is being fed back to us by our gay and lesbian stakeholders. They are concerned that they have the ability to identify themselves when they think it is appropriate. The majority of them do think it is appropriate to identify themselves within the census. I also think that if you say this is a private issue and not a public issue that is completely wrong. There is a huge amount of evidence on the devastating impact on people's lives that comes from harassment, bullying, targeted violence. We have recognised all of that. There are also, or have been, considerable examples, but we do not know the quantification, for example, of discrimination in the workplace. That actually affects the productivity of the country and it affects the economy. I think it is frankly ludicrous to suggest that this issue is purely a private one and I do not think most gay and lesbian people would agree with you.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ15 Mr Walker:Ì I think you spend a lot of time with pressure groups who clearly want to promote their interests, but I personally find your approach and the approach of people like you deeply patronising, and I know, like you, a number of gay people. They do not all share your view. In fact, they are fed up at being defined by their sexuality and you seem to want to perpetuate this problem. You are determined to make it a problem and keep it going as a problem.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý To be frank, I think it is patronising to say what you have just said because people define themselves in different ways in different situations. Nobody wants to be identified by a single characteristic all the time and on every occasion, but people do want the right to identify themselves with certain characteristics when they feel that that would be helpful to them. If I were a gay man I would not want to necessarily identify myself as such at this particular point or when I am socialising or something, but in a health surgery I may well want to. There are different occasions when people want to identify different aspects of their identity, and it seems to me that if we are serious about the legislation that we already have in this area, if we are serious about having legislation in this area because we recognise that this is an identity issue which causes real distress and problems in people's lives sometimes, but we are not willing to measure it at all, unlike any of the other characteristics, then, frankly, I think that is patronising.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ16 Mr Walker:Ì Finally, Chairman, out of solidarity with gay people, if we get this in the census I shall define myself as gay then, because, quite frankly, I think it is a ridiculous question and I am more than happy to define myself as homosexual. I am not but it is such a silly question and I might as well_ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý Okay, that may be your view but I have to say that we have done some research recently on how people would identify themselves in different survey situations. I have to say that because we do not have decent population estimates this has to be taken as large-scale qualitative work, but we interviewed 3,000 people who had declared themselves to have a minority sexual orientation and then asked them how they would define themselves in a situation in the household where other people knew what they would say, and the vast majority of them would identify themselves in the same way, but there is a minority who, for one reason or another, choose in those circumstances to identify themselves differently, and one can make models to create estimates as a result of that information. I do not want to say that that data is robust in numerical terms, but it is clear. If you had 3,000 people that you had spoken to as a result of, say, having 300 focus groups around the country and they were all broadly saying the same thing and they had a very diverse range of the population, you would take some notice of that as qualitative evidence, and, frankly, that qualitative evidence does not suggest what you are suggesting. It suggests that most people would take it seriously and that most people would answer in a way that is appropriate.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ17 Chairman:Ì Just finally on this, if it turned out that large numbers of people did not want to declare their sexual identity on a census form, and you said yourself just now that you would not want to proclaim it, filling in an official census form is quite a thing. If people do not want to do that there would be no point asking the question, would there, and we know on the income question that the answer against the income question is that it shows_or at the least the argument is_that it has a depressing effect on returns?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý I think this is partly a matter of judgment. We are respectful of the fact that some people still see this as a personal issue and one that they do not want to declare. We are suggesting that it is a voluntary question in the same way as the religion question. There is no suggestion that anybody is going to be forced against their will to declare their sexual identity, so that is one point. The second point is, frankly, there is no direct evidence that suggests this would have a dampening effect on the overall completion rate of the census. When we asked the ONS about this they did send some information but it was mainly saying that they were worried about it because there was some sign in relation to controversial questions like the income question, for example, that there could be some dampening effect. There is not actually any direct evidence that this one would have a dampening effect, I do not think, and it is also partly a matter of how well the census is promoted and what is said about it at the time, and as for why this would be any greater an issue than, say, was the furore around having the ethnicity question introduced for the first time two decades ago, I am not sure. It feels as though the standards being applied in this case are somewhat different.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì Right_let us move from sex to religion.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ18 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì The British Humanist Association, and I think your own organisation, have raised this with the ONS. I think there is a fair point, I hope you agree, that the way the question is phrased at the moment, What is your religion?", tends to depress the numbers of those who are not necessarily religious and so you get a false reading. Some of us have lobbied for a change to that question and I am wondering what your view is.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý I think this is extremely difficult and it is the one I have to be frank about and say we are less certain about what the correct solution is compared to some of the other points that we have been making. I think there are two related issues. One is making the question non-leading, not assuming that you are in a religion, and we and others have suggested a different stem to the question and we believe that it could be made less leading in that sense. The other aspect is the issue about whether, as the legislation does, you attempt to do anything on the religion question which covers beliefs other than religious beliefs. That, I think, is much harder. I agree with the ONS that in the testing they have been able to do at the moment the term belief" added to the question confuses people and it is not clear what people are responding to when they respond to that. Our view is that we should change the question to make it less leading in the stem, so it should be more neutral than, What is your religion?"; it should be more along the lines of, Do you have a religion?", or some such thing. It does need further testing and we are sympathetic to the problems and issues that the ONS have in doing this, but we do think there should be some more work done and that it is possible to have a less leading one. The other area of complexity, and this is similar to the sexual orientation one we were talking about earlier, is that there are different concepts, obviously, of belonging to, being affiliated to, having beliefs and so on associated with religion. The ONS has come to the view that a broad affiliation question is a better basis for their modelling estimates of the other things than having a question which asks directly about belonging. I think that is a matter of judgment. I do not necessarily disagree with it. I do not think there is overwhelming evidence for it, but as long as one is clear what aspect of religion one is measuring in the question and it is non-leading then those are the two criteria and we would be happy with an affiliation question which took out the bias in the stem.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ19 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì I must say I have come up with my own formulation as a compromise, in a sense, because I know it opens up all sorts of qualifications if you have a complicated question, but if the question was, If you have a religion, what is it?", you would get a much better response, if you just put that clause at the front of the question.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý I think there are a number of options like that. The problem is that they have not all been tested. In terms of the best out of a number of options one has to make a judgment on the basis of what is tested. I think there is just about still time to do some more testing, I am not certain, but I certainly think with the current question there is enough evidence to suggest that it is leading and it does give considerably higher estimates for particularly loose affiliations with Christianity than other questions would give.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ20 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì That touches on another problem where people have a heritage which they are often very proud of_a Jewish heritage, a Sikh heritage; but may not be religious. Expanding or building cultural heritage into the ethnicity question, What is your ethnicity?", I believe would overcome that problem. Have you given any thought to that?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý We have given some thought to it. Again, I think there is no easy solution. When you talk to the sorts of groups you have just mentioned there seems to be a division. Some of them are happy to see it encapsulated in the ethnicity questions; others prefer it to stand alone in the religious question. There has been a concern, I know, that Sikhs in particular would be less counted, as it were, if it were taken out of the religion question. I do not think there are easy answers in this area but I do think that in the absence of a perfect answer it could be made better by making the stem of the question less leading.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ21 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì I just think that if the question was ethnicity or cultural heritage, just broadening that slightly, would overcome the problem, certainly in my constituency where I have a very wide range of people from a whole range of different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý It seems to me that you may be right or you may not be and one would have to test how people out there responded to the term and how they interpreted the term. In the absence of that test I think for now leaving the ethnic question broadly comparable with the last one is probably the right decision. That would be my view on balance but I do accept that it needs further exploration for next time.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ22 Paul Rowen:Ì I would like to ask a question about migration and ask Professor Rees to start with. Why do you think the migration questions were included?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý There is a great concern that we do not have accurate international migration statistics so we do not know very reliably how many people are coming into the country. We do not know even less reliably how many people are leaving the country and we do not know where they are going. The Office for National Statistics uses a very small part of the international passenger survey to make their national estimates. It is of the order of 4,000 or 5,000 respondents coming through airports or seaports, so our knowledge is very lacking. This was all reviewed by the UK Statistics Authority earlier in the year. It was reviewed last year by the Treasury Select Committee. My interpretation, which the Director may confirm or deny, is that adding additional questions into the census was seen as satisfying this demand. The argument I would make_and as an academic I will use all the answers but only for one year_is that we need a more fundamental think about how to generate accurate figures for the total numbers involved across our borders and settling and staying for different lengths of time.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ23 Paul Rowen:Ì If I could take you up on that, how accurate is it that you are going to be? People come into this country for a number of reasons. There are asylum seekers. There are failed asylum seekers, people who are trying to avoid the system. There are people on visit visas. There are people on spouse visas. There are people on work permits. How does the question, How long do you intend to stay in the UK?", provide any sense of or reliable information about why people are coming in? If I am on a spouse visa I might want to say, I am going to be here for ever".ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I think what you are arguing for is even more migration questions in the census.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ24 Paul Rowen:Ì No, I am supporting you. I actually think that it is quite ridiculous, or would you not agree, that a ten-year census is trying to measure something that is a snapshot because actually it is a dynamic that is moving and changing all the time? You cannot do something that is reliable in one census, because of the range of issues that that one question poses, for it to have any meaningful statistical value.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Yes, I would agree with you. The kind of investigation intended behind those questions could well have been done with a targeted survey of migrants.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ25 Paul Rowen:Ì Is not the real reason that the Home Office at the fag end of the last Tory Government abolished the system of counting people in and counting people out? The UK Borders Agency has been singularly unable to manage its caseload to have any reliable figures as to where people are in the system, and even the new e-border system does not count everybody because if you are a child you are not going in and out of the country; you are not properly recorded. Is it not a political attempt to say, We are doing something about this", whereas in reality it is a sticking plaster to cover a gaping hole?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý That would be my general view, but, just to defend the Office's proposals, behind the question is an attempt to link up and understand what the current instrument, the international passenger survey, which does ask an intention question, is providing and test its reliability. I think that is the thinking behind it. I do not think it is the right thinking.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ26 Paul Rowen:Ì I get failed asylum seekers coming into my surgery. They have lost their right to remain in the country and many of them are sleeping on people's couches, or whatever. Do you honestly think that when the survey is done those people are going to put their hands up and say, Yes, I stop at that flat and I am an illegal immigrant. Please deport me"?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý No, of course not.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ27 Paul Rowen:Ì So is it not a meaningless, useless question?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Yes. The intention question, I think, will get lots of incorrect answers.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ28 Paul Rowen:Ì Putting the other side of the thing, one of the reasons, I suspect, this has been included is that people like local authorities complained bitterly after the last census that the government grants that were targeted to them were based on census data that were widely inaccurate. If you take a borough like Haringey, for example, where the numbers of people moving in and out of the borough are huge in any one year, is this an attempt to provide some reliable data? Do you think that is the reason?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý There has obviously been real pressure to try to improve migration statistics in any way that can be done, and I think that in looking around for almost anything that would help the census was thought to be one thing that might help a bit. I have real doubts about the intention to stay question, as to whether people would answer it. The very people you are interested in are less likely to answer it. I would support Phil's comments about the use of administrative data, not just the e-borders data but in particular national insurance number data. I had an inquiry only yesterday from one of the big retailers who are interested in the local Polish populations around the country, a predictable question, and one naturally turns to national insurance numbers as an indicator.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ29 Paul Rowen:Ì But if you are a non-EU and you have not got the right to remain, or if you are a student, you will not be given a national insurance number.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý That is quite true. It is not perfect, but in the commercial world people are often looking for good pointers and insights rather than the seeking of perfect numbers. One would naturally look towards administrative sources because they are continuously refreshed month by month, quarter by quarter, or whatever, and typically they are available for small areas, and when you look at the numbers you can think, That is plausible, 8,000 of a particular category in Oxford.", or whatever it is, Yes, this is giving us a sense of some reality", and so I think that is where the real progress will be made on migration.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý If I could comment on that, you made a comment that some local authorities were unhappy with the 2001 census results, the population counts for their areas. I do not think that was the fault of the census. It was that their expectations were based on the rolled forward population estimates from the previous census, and those are: add births, take away deaths, add immigrants, take away emigrants. The problem was that the migration counts were poorly estimated. Westminster was allocated far more immigrants than had actually arrived because when you arrive at Heathrow airport you are asked where you are going, so you say central London, and you get allocated to Westminster but you may be going somewhere quite different within London because your knowledge of the geography of the place is probably non-existent, so Westminster's beef last time with national statistics was a result of being misled by the population estimates. That is why getting the migration statistics right year by year through the decade is so vital, so that they are reasonably close, local authority by local authority in 2011, to what people are expecting to happen in the census.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ30 Paul Rowen:Ì So is this question statistically reliable or is it just a political gesture?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý You will have to ask that of the Director.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ31 Paul Rowen:Ì You are a statistician and, given the points I have made about the various people who are here for various reasons and whatnot, is that going to produce reliable statistics?ËÜjf12ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I do not think the research has been done on it, the in-depth research on the reliability of the question.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ32 Chairman:Ì As I understand it, though, Professor Rees, your essential argument is that instead of bothering about, as it were, trying to refine the migration questions in the census it would be much better simply to put some money and effort into making sure that all the data sources that would be available to the Home Office were put together properly so that we get some reliable migration figures from that collection of source data.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý That is my basic argument, yes.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ33 Chairman:Ì Is that just idiosyncratic to you or is that an argument that is widely shared?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý I would say it is widely shared and, thinking back to the Treasury Sub-Committee a year or so ago on counting the population, that was a theme that came out pretty strongly, that administrative sources were ahead on tracking the population.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì We will pursue that a little later.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ34 David Heyes:Ì It is interesting, is it not, that, in terms of the arguments that are deployed against the inclusion of those migration questions in the census, very similar arguments are used in the opposite direction in relation to income? You argue strongly that income should be included, Professor, and yourself, Mr Dugmore, and yet all the same criticisms could be made that you have just been making about including migration statistics, that people will be coy about giving truthful answers, the deterrent effect. In fact, the argument is that they are of less use for not including income. Help me to understand that.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý The income question has been used in national government surveys for a long time. It is a well tested question in the labour force survey and its successors and in the forthcoming integrated household survey a household income question is used, and also in the expenditure on food survey, which was going into the integrated household survey. In that sense it has a much better pedigree than the set of migration questions. It has also been used successfully, as I said, pointing to my PhD thesis, in other countries on a regular basis. What is the alternative? The alternative is for Parliament to ask Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs to generate from their administrative database the equivalent neighbourhood statistics on the distribution of income, again using very broad and non-disclosive classes. That would be an excellent source of information year by year.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý If I may just add to that, in the case of migration often one is looking at ebbs and flows and changes of fairly short order if you think of migration from eastern Europe and so on, and a lot change in a few months, or certainly a year or two. With an income question, yes, I think over a long period of time there may be some gradual shifts, but a lot of the measure would be fairly fundamental and would last for several years. When one looks at social classifications across the country it is quite striking that, whilst there might be a few areas that change dramatically, many areas do not, and I fancy that if income were to be asked this time and ten years hence the broad distributions across the country might well be broadly similar.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ35 David Heyes:Ì I think Professor Rees was saying that you would get better quality data if HMRC could be obliged to provide it than you could ever hope to get out of the census.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Yes, we could.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ36 David Heyes:Ì You would still argue for it being included in the census. How do other countries get round this? Scotland presumably are satisfied that they can deal with the kinds of problems that have been listed. There are comparable countries that have dealt with this. What is the difference? Why do they do it and we cannot?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý In the US case they have asked for income for decades, so everyone is very used to supplying that information at the time of the census. In Britain it is routinely asked in household surveys, in commercial surveys. When you fill in your warranty card for your latest electronic household apparatus you are often asked for your income in more detail than in the proposed census question, so people by now are fairly comfortable about reporting their income, a very blurred and non-disclosive form of their income. Just to pick up your point earlier about the impact of an income question on response, that certainly was not the case in the census test in Scotland. They decided there was not an impact. In the case of England and Wales there was a statistically significant difference. It was between_and here I am doing it from memory so it would need correction_51 and 52.5 %, so 51 % in those test areas which had an income question responded to and 52.5 % in those areas which did not. It turned out, because of the size of the England and Wales census test, to be statistically significant but in terms of importance I do not think it was sufficient to eject the question.ËÜtbÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Darton:Ücf1Ý Although there are alternative sources of income data, they could be better, such as the suggestion made for the Inland Revenue. The advantage of having it on the census is, of course, that it helps you understand and take a lot more value from some of the other questions on the census. It is clear that the experience of various categories of people that you might measure in the census, say, somebody with a disability in their service needs, is likely to be quite different, depending on their level of income, just as one example. I think the case for putting the income question in, and we raise it as putting it in the census, is that there is a clear and well-established relationship between socioeconomic conditions and other things that we are trying to assess with the census and it is therefore important to have it in the same survey.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ37 David Heyes:Ì Just one last question for Professor Rees, if I may. You would argue that the deterrent effect is fairly negligible, as evidenced by the testing that has taken place. Is there any evidence, perhaps from overseas, of the numerical difference between the response on a test, which people know is a test and therefore does not have legal power behind it, and the actual census, which is accompanied by the kind of publicity campaign that says you must do this, it is a legal obligation? Does the power of compulsion make a difference to the response rate?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý It does in general in the census survey. The response rate is around 50 to 60 % in the tests and it is going to be 92 to 98 % in the census. I do not know of any evidence from other countries to answer directly your question but the Director of National Statistics or the Director of the Census may be able to answer that question.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ38 Chairman:Ì In your opening remarks, Professor Rees, though, on income you said that a reason for having it in the census was that the other sources where it was used and tested had defects attached to them. Now, though, you have been arguing that in fact their pedigree is shown by the fact that they have been so successful in the labour survey and in the household survey and therefore it would be easy to do it in the census. One of these things has to be true, but I do not think they can both be true, can they?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Asking an income question in the surveys does not deliver you the detailed geographical information and tables that you need, so that is the key reason for having an income question in the census. When I referred to the other instruments what I meant was the other variables which are used essentially as proxies for income, so unemployment, for example, or very low skilled employment and activity rates in the labour force, which can be measured with the existing questions in the census. ONS and others have then attempted to construct a synthetic income estimate for small areas, so there is a ward income value. The problem with that is that it does not contain any more information about the distribution of income than the variables that have been used on the right-hand side of the equation to predict this income, and income distributions are much more varied than that. The illustration I use with my students is this. Assume you have knowledge of the distribution of lawyers across your city, and there are lawyers living in most of the wards, and then you apply the average income that you know from your survey of lawyers. You would be overestimating the lawyers who lived in poor districts, because there are poor lawyers (perhaps), and underestimating them in rich areas. In particular an income question will enable you to pick out the clusters of poor people in rich areas, but if you use area averages in your indices of deprivation which feed through to the funding distribution formulae in probably a dozen government functions you are going to miss out those pockets of poverty in rich areas.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ39 Chairman:Ì An income question would simply be the one that asked what your income was each week?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Yes, that is right.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ40 Chairman:Ì It would not ask what the source of the income was.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý No. You would be asked to include benefits as well as earnings.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ41 Mr Prentice:Ì But surely the simple thing to do would be just to ask HMRC to publish figures for small areas? Obviously, they would not have information on people who do not pay tax, for example, so that is a problem, but why do we not just ask the Inland Revenue to publish the information they have for smaller areas than they do at the moment?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý That would be an excellent suggestion.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ42 Mr Prentice:Ì It would be dead easy, would it not?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I do not know.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ43 Mr Prentice:Ì Yes, it would.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý Could I add to that in terms of yes, I think it would be a great thing to head for; we need to get some good information on income in small areas, but it would stand in isolation and, of course, the great advantage of the census is the possibility of relating income to other variables as well, so that would be the attraction of asking it still within the census, unless the HMRC records were to be merged into a census database, which is quite a long way ahead, I think.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ44 Mr Prentice:Ì And that would hold true even if the information were published at a neighbourhood level, a very small area level? You could make the correlation, surely?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý Yes, I think it would give material to play with, but it is rather like some of the other statistics we have from administrative sources at the moment on unemployment and claimants and so on. They tend to be single slices and you can look at small areas and think, Yes, they are there and not somewhere else", but you cannot then analyse them in terms of housing tenure or ethnic origin or some of the other questions you are asking.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ45 Mr Prentice:Ì The last census was three pages long and the next census is going to be four pages. I read somewhere in my briefing material that when the methodology was tested there was no decline in response just with the addition of the extra page. How far could we go in asking people to fill in the census? What about a five-page census next time?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý There is a certain cost to the public purse of each page. The Director of the Census can give you an estimate of that. It is a serious matter of public expenditure. The key innovation in the administration of the 2011 census is the ability of the householder to fill it in online via the internet, and that makes it very cheap to add further pages should this Committee or Parliament wish.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ46 Mr Prentice:Ì It is the deterrent effect of having the extra page, that is what I am after. It would have no effect on the response rate, that is what you are saying?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý No, it would do.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ47 Mr Prentice:Ì What about a fifth page then?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý As you expand the number of questions there must be a deterrent effect on response. Not necessarily on surveying the form, which is a legal requirement, but in completing all of the questions. That is where the internet version is very useful because it is very easy to go through, you are not disturbed by having to read questions you do not have to read, there is a routing through it. I was privileged that National Statistics asked a set of people, including academics, after the census rehearsal this October to test out the internet questionnaire. I think it is the best internet questionnaire and easiest to complete I have ever done.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ48 Mr Prentice:Ì I understand all that, but when the testing was done in Newham and wherever else, the fourth page was not seen as a deterrent but you are telling us there may be a problem with accuracy. I think you did tell us that people would not necessarily fill in the forms as accurately as they might have done if the census was shorter. Is that not what you told us?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I think I am straying outside my area of expertise here.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ49 Mr Prentice:Ì Okay.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý It is simply that if you were to look at the total body of information provided by 60 million people over the 40 questions, or slightly less than that, in the 2001 census and asked how many of the data items_60 million times 35, or whatever it was_actually depended on completed answers from forms, you knock out five per cent because of non-response in the census and those that had to be invented, but then there is the whole edit and imputation process which the census very skilfully implements to fill in all the forms that have not been completed. My estimate, and I think it has been confirmed by others, is of that huge data matrix only 60 % of it actually depends on people who have put some mark on the piece of paper.ÜepÜcf5ÝÜfu1ÝÜnhÜrs ËÜfo1ÝÜepÜcf5,8,8.5ÝÜnhÜcf1ÝÜixNote from witness: The correct figure is 90 %. Of the 10 % of data that was imputed in the 2001 Census, 6 % was missed because people did not return a questionnaire at all, and 4 % because some questions were left unanswered by those that did return a questionnaire.ËÜrsÜfeÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ50 Mr Prentice:Ì Amazing.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý Yes, it is amazing. That has always been the case. It is the dirty secret of the census! That is why we need a very sophisticated statistical methodology which is built into the edit and imputation operation, it is built into what is called the one number census, add that five per cent missing. There is incredible expertise that is gathered in National Statistics to produce a really good reliable product because Joe Public does not manage to get to the end of the form quite often.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝMr Prentice:Ì We know the dirty secret now!ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ51 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì Is not the important thing to have meaningful time series and if they make the same mistakes in every census you get the meaningful time series? If you suddenly clean it up and make people answer more questions, in a sense the time series breaks down.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý What you need is more reliable ways of filling in those missing answers and the best statistical methodology is used for that. There is a phrase in the statistics profession that is borrowing from strength", so if you have a household and only half the record is filled in you look for another household nearby that matches your completed variables and then you borrow the response from somebody who has returned it. That is the basic operation that goes on.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ52 Chairman:Ì Another dirty secret!ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Dugmore:Ücf1Ý No further dirty secrets here! I would just like to pick up the point about the number of pages, and I am sure you are right that logically it must begin to fade and I think those of us who have lobbied for questions have lurking behind the feeling that you cannot just keep on adding more and more questions. I suppose the pleasant surprise was when the test was done for 2007 and the difference between three and four pages in statistical terms did not show any difference. I am sure had it been five or six decay would set in. We do have evidence there is not such a difference.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ53 Mr Prentice:Ì Can I just ask Professor Rees, because you are the population expert, in future immigration into the United Kingdom British people marrying overseas spouses will be a large component, and we have read the speculation in the papers about the UK population going beyond 70 million, is it possible to forecast meaningfully future trends in intercontinental marriage, or is that just impossible?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I do not know anyone who has done it. I speak as a husband of an immigrant, and long may that flow continue. I am currently engaged in a project which is attempting to forecast for the UK and its local areas the ethnic composition of the population and we will have to make estimates of the flows of immigrants and emigrants to and from the different origin countries that people come from.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ54 Mr Prentice:Ì It is whether it is a first generation thing, or second or third generation thing, people going back_we are talking about the Asian subcontinent here_for their spouses. That would have a huge impact on future immigration into the United Kingdom, would it not?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I do not know. If you look at the estimates of regional origin of immigrants over time, for those from South Asia, although the immigration for participation in the labour force has gone down substantially and is controlled by various regulations and laws, the total immigration has been very flat, the family reunification immigration has continued, and will continue. One of my PhD students born in the UK of Pakistani origin found his wife in Pakistan.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ55 Mr Prentice:Ì That is the point; it is the non-controlled part of immigration. The controlled part is the points system and all that kind of stuff. My question is, given it is such a big percentage of total immigration into the United Kingdom, whether it is possible to forecast and you are saying it is not really.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝProfessor Rees:Ücf1Ý I would have a go. Obviously it depends entirely on the legislative framework for that migration. I would anticipate a continuing flow of migrants from South Asia marrying spouses in this country, yes.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì Before we go into the wider issues, all of which are fascinating, we will have to thank you for the session this morning. Thank you for expressing your general views and your reservations about certain questions and on the whole your endorsement of the questions in general, but raising the particular issues you wanted to talk to us about. Thank you very much for that. We shall pursue those now with those responsible for it. Thank you very much indeed.ËÜnbÜjf90ÝÜjf22ÝÜjf50ÝÜcf2ÝWitnesses: Ücf3ÝMs Jil MathesonÜcf1Ý, National Statistician, and Ücf3ÝMr Glen WatsonÜcf1Ý, Census Director, Office for National Statistics, gave evidence.ÌÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ56 Chairman:Ì Let us move seamlessly into our second half. We are delighted to welcome Jil Matheson, who is the new National Statistician. We met your predecessor on a number of occasions and we are delighted to welcome to you. Glen Watson, who we have met before, is the Census Director at ONS. Thank you very much indeed for coming. I am sure we are going to ask you about the issues that we were talking about in the previous session, but can I ask you a general question to start with. How open are you at this stage to making amendments in the kinds of areas that we have just been talking about?ËÜjf65Ý19 November 2009	Ms Jil Matheson and Mr Glen WatsonÌÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý If I could start by describing the process by which we got to the recommendations which we have, which was four years of very detailed consultation with a range of users: users in central government, local government, voluntary sector, business_we have heard about some of that_plus extensive testing with thousands of members of the public. The balance that we have to make depends on a whole set of criteria about what is the need for this information_not just what is the desire, but what is the need for it_what is unique about the census that means information that is collected from people at the same point in time, so providing information about small areas and about the national picture, are there any alternative sources, could the information be provided in any other ways, how good is the quality of the information that people can provide. That is on the demand side. It is important to balance that with what is the ability and acceptability of that with members of the public. All of the parts of the proposed questionnaire have been tested, they have been discussed with users and also tested with members of the public. What we have come up with is the professional judgment on where that balance lies so that it provides information that is needed by everybody in society but also matches the ability and willingness of the public to provide that information. There were some tough judgments. We could have had a form much longer than the one that is proposed. You will have heard that certain people are disappointed, and that is because it matters. There have been requests for additional questions which we are not recommending. Some people have said they would like the questionnaire shortened, but there is no agreement on how you would shorten it. What we have got before us is the basis of four years' work and our professional judgment on the right balance.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ57 Chairman:Ì That is all very interesting but not quite the answer to the question, which was how open are you to further change?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý If you are asking about the process, this is our professional judgment on what the best balance is. It is for Parliament to decide on what the final content will be between now and whenever the Order and then the regulations are passed. This is our advice and our recommendations.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ58 Chairman:Ì When you produced this, as you did recently, and you read the headlines about A Snooper's Charter" and all that, you must have groaned, because you did all these years of testing and research and then some idiot politician comes out with remarks like that.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I did groan. Because there is a decade's worth of decisions that are made by all sectors that impact on everybody then it is important that we get the population estimate right, that is the core of what the census is about, that we maximise response, we make it easy for people to fill in and we explain the information they give us is secure and safe, it is held confidential for 100 years and has been since the census was begun in 1801. Being able to explain that to people is the essence of the census operation, which is why in response I did write to newspapers to say I thought the reporting of that was unfortunate because we have to get those messages over to people: it matters; the information is confidential; and it is safe and secure.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ59 Chairman:Ì If we leave that response aside, it is the case, is it not, given the last session, it is these areas of sexual orientation, religion and income which are the ones that have been most testing for you?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Each of them separately has been tested almost to destruction. We have been absolutely determined to have a whole series of tests, which have included postal tests, which are voluntary, looking at the difference in response rates whether you include or exclude an income question, for example. Plus face-to-face interviews with large numbers of people, talking to them about the form and what their attitude is to particular questions. We can pick up on the individual ones and what we found out about those. That has been the process that we have been through.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ60 Chairman:Ì The voices that we were just listening to are authoritative figures, they know about censuses, questions and data. They are voices that need to be attended to, are they not?ËÜjf12ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Indeed, and they are very much part of the process that we have been going through. We have had extensive conversations with the people you have spoken to, and many others. We get expertise from academics and users, and also from census offices in other countries. There is a network of census offices so that we can learn from each other, draw experience from each other and make sure that our developments are in line with experience that we can draw from elsewhere.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ61 Chairman:Ì I am sure colleagues will want to ask about the different areas we asked about just now. Glen, do you want to add anything before we start?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý No, not at this stage. Thank you.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ62 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì If I may pursue the question about religion once again. I have concerns that the question is not formulated in the right way and that for many people the question would be uncomfortable or difficult to answer. You have had representations from the British Humanist Association and some of their suggestions raise their own complexities and difficulties. As I said to the previous group of interviewees, what about if you just put in front of that, If you have a religion, what is it?" That would overcome many of the problems. It seems to me to be a compromise that would go some way towards satisfying the criticisms.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Glen can probably give you more detail about this. One of the things that we did do in the last year was to test an alternative question. It was not that one. It was an even more open question, which was simply to say, Which of these groups best describes you" because of the difficulties you were discussing earlier that if you used the word religion" or faith" or belief" it confuses. We did test another version which was even more neutral. What we found from that was even that more neutral question was not one that significant proportions of people felt able to answer, they did not quite know how to answer it. It did not make much difference either to the proportions who said they were Christian or Muslim or the major groups. On the basis of that, despite the discussion that I know has been had previously that the question there is potentially leading, we found it was also one that people understood. We have not found an alternative which performs better and also does what an awful lot of users have said they want, which is continuity, time series. Being able to say how things have changed over time is one of the core elements of the census. I know from previous experience that whenever we present census results, one of the first questions people ask is, And how has it changed?" There would have to be very good reason and an alternative tested that was better and we were able to understand what it was measuring in a better way, and we have not found that which is why we are recommending it staying on the grounds of continuity.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ63 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì As someone with an interest in statistics it is important to have consistent time series so that they become meaningful. The BHA has said it overstates religiosity. Taking my suggestion further, if you had a series of religions and other", and then no response", the no response" would be the easy way out for those people who do not want to say very much about their beliefs, but you would get a very positive response from all those people who did have religious beliefs. A simple question: If you have a religion, what is it?", a series of religions, other" and then no response". That would seem to me to be a way of overcoming the problem.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý We have not tested that but can I give you an instant reaction, which is that I am always wary of questions where you are interpreting a blank, ie if you do not have a religion you do not fill anything in. At the moment, the very first option is to say no religion". That is the very first item that appears in the list. If somebody simply does not fill the question in I am not quite sure how we would interpret that.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ64 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì Your predecessor, Karen Dunnell, seemed to suggest that the question was still open on religion and even at this stage there might be a possibility of adjustment, and I just hope that my suggestions might be considered. There is the other question about people who have religious heritage, not just Jews or Sikhs but I know many people who are proud of their Catholic heritage, for example, an Irish Catholic identity, but are not actually religious. If you included in the ethnicity, Ethnicity or cultural heritage", you could shift that complication out of the religious area and put it into the cultural heritage/ ethnicity area. Would that not solve the problem?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I am going to ask Glen. Because of the issues that have been raised he has been responsible for the detailed testing that has been done over the last year.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Can I first of all comment on what Jil was saying about the testing of the different religion wording. We have tested six or seven different possibilities over the last three or four years and the version that we tested that was completely open-ended, Which of these best describes you?", showed less than a two percentage point difference between those saying Christian" under that question and under the What is your religion?" question and showed no difference at all in the proportion of people saying No religion". That was enough to satisfy me and our people that, although grammatically it might look like a leading question, in terms of the way people answer and interpret it, it is not and there is no evidence to support that. That satisfied us that it was the right construct given that we wanted to have continuity with 2001. On the Sikh, Jew and ethnic and cultural heritage question, we do keep the Sikh and Jew as tick boxes within the religion question and our research has shown that we get better counts of people who consider themselves Jewish or Sikhs in this way. For example, when we introduced the Sikh tick box into the ethnic group question with our testing it caused confusion, particularly for some Indian people who were thinking, I'm Sikh in religious terms but I'm Indian in ethnicity terms" and we found the count of Sikhs went down. Our judgment is that it is a better way of getting a good count of Sikhs and Jews to keep these things within the religion question.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ65 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì Where I live the last census threw up a population of 183,000, something like that, and the local authority with other measures came up with a figure for the population of the town of well over 200,000, ten per cent more at least. It is very worrying that there are so many people not being identified. I know we have a high proportion of ethnic minority people from abroad and so on, so that is going to cause a problem, but if that was repeated across the country we would seriously be getting our population very badly wrong. Would you like to comment on that?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý This is at the heart of what we are trying to do in the population estimates on which local authorities in part are basing their expectations, and this is the point Professor Rees was making earlier about expectations. The population estimates that are produced every year are part of that expectation and then there is the census estimate which provides the benchmark. Getting the census estimate right in 2011 is the test that we have applied to all the bits that have come in to us: can people answer and is it going to help us make sure that we get the population estimate as good as it can be? Part of that is also matching the work that is going on elsewhere, which we are not here to talk about, about improving the population estimates so that the gap in reality in expectation is not there. Also, working with local authorities in advance of the census so that they understand what the census estimate is. If I can just go on to talk about that very briefly. One of the issues about the population estimate which I think is not widely understood is that the population estimate is based on the definition of the usual resident", people who are living in an area or in the country for 12 months or more. That is a UN definition. Of course, there are people living at any one point in time in an area with lots of turnover, lots of churn, people coming and going. That does not mean people are not there, just that they were not counted in the mid-year estimate. Explaining what that is and trying, as we have done for the first time this year, to produce estimates of short-term population, both estimates of churn, how many people come and go from an area, and what are the estimates of the number of people who are here for less than 12 months as being part of the work on population estimates, the census provides an important benchmark.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Quite a few of the new questions proposed in 2011 are precisely to try and get this count of the population right and to help us reconcile differences in perception between the census results and what local authorities tell us by reference to other sources. This is partly why we are asking about second residencies and making sure that we collect information about visitors overnight. This is why we are asking about the short-term migration questions that have already been discussed. It is to allow us to be in a much better position to reconcile these different views of the world and to explain those differences.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ66 Chairman:Ì Just on second residencies, what precisely is the question going to be?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý The question is, Do you spend more than 30 days in another address during the year" and the second question, If so, what type of address is that? Is that a place where you go and work? Is it an Armed Forces' base? Is it a student's term-time address?" et cetera.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ67 Chairman:Ì If you go and stay with granny for 30 days or more a year, that confuses that with someone who has got a villa in Spain, does it not, which is what we want to know about?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý It is helpful for many purposes, for local authorities and other planners to have an idea of how many people are staying in their patch rather than usually resident there. They are using services, using street collection, local transport routes, health services, et cetera.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ68 Chairman:Ì We do not know at the moment how many people do have a genuinely second home and we do not know how many of those are abroad. That is big stuff in terms of changes happening in society. I do not see that this 30-day question will help. Why not ask the question directly, Do you own a second property? Is it in this country or is it abroad?"ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý It is not just necessarily about owning or renting, it might be about temporarily staying there. The reason we picked 30 days was because we wanted to separate out those very short-term visits where somebody is just going on holiday, somebody is staying with a friend for a couple of weeks. We want to pick out more substantive stays at other times of the year.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ69 Mr Walker:Ì Is it 30 continuous days?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý No. I have got the question here.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ70 Mr Walker:Ì What happens if you go and spend two weeks with a friend at Christmas and two and a half weeks in the summer, does that get caught?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý If it was over 30 days potentially, yes, if people follow the instructions correctly.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ71 Chairman:Ì I would urge you to look at this again. I have discovered it has been frustrating in wanting to know various things_not to get data_on how many people own a second property either in this country or abroad. That has been a huge social change and not to be able to log it through a census and I do not think you are going to do it, as Charles' question reveals, through this 30-day question, why not just ask them?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Because there has not been a particularly strong user demand for that information. What there has been is a strong user demand for us to be able to make sure that we have a method of counting the population on different bases. We have the usual resident population base, which is what the primary census results will be based upon, but using this visitor information, second residence information, it will be possible for us to construct estimates of how many people are there during the working week, how many people are there potentially at different times of the year. Analysts and policymakers will have quite a lot more information that they can draw on.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ72 Mr Walker:Ì Quite a lot of people go on holiday in August. Why do we need a survey to tell us that?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý We do not, and that is not what this is trying to do.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ73 Mr Walker:Ì Can I ask some questions? There has been an exchange of views between Nicholas Hurd MP and Sir Michael Scholar regarding the question about the number of bedrooms. According to Sir Michael Scholar that is to help local councils establish whether and where accommodation in their areas is overcrowded". I used to be a local councillor in Wandsworth and I am well aware of Broxbourne Council, I represent Broxbourne, and they have a very able planning department, very able building control teams who have a pretty sharp idea as to the amount of accommodation in their area. In fact, most councils have a pretty sharp idea about this. Can you just persuade me that there is an absolute overriding demand for this information? What I have heard from yourselves and other witnesses is this stock answer, That information would be very interesting to some people". You can argue that on any question. Give us an overriding reason why this must be included in the census when_I am sorry, this is a long question_the former Chairman of the Statistics Commission in a letter to Nick Hurd said: I was Chairman of the Statistics Commission at the time of the 2001 census and I saw in operation a ratchet mechanism by which every ten years the census form becomes more and more complicated and less fit for purpose". There we have it, gosh!ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I will start with the first part, bedrooms. I said right at the beginning that part of the test for this is not do people want it, it is do they need it. Part of what we have been doing is testing with all of those who said, Yes, we'd like to have", and asking, Tell us how that is going to be used? What decisions are impacted by that information?" On the bedrooms, I do not know whether it was Wandsworth and Broxbourne but the response came back from local authorities about the bedroom standard, which is the measure of overcrowding. What they may have is an indication of some kind, and I suspect it may be variable across the country, about the stock of housing. What they also need is to understand about the population who are regularly living in different kinds of housing. It is an aggregate level. You may know that in Wandsworth there are a certain number of bedrooms and a certain number of people, but what you do not know is how those things go together in particular buildings. It is about where are the pockets, and again this was the test for the census, Do you need to know it at a small area level?" The case was very strongly made by CLG and local government that in order for them to be able to understand and act on overcrowding, as measured by the bedroom standard, knowing about bedrooms was an essential part of it.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ74 Mr Walker:Ì What do you say to the view of the former chairman of the Statistics CommissionÜepÜcf5ÝÜfu2ÝÜnhÜrs that the census form becomes more and more complicated and less fit for purpose"? Indeed, he goes on to say: The only people who are not consulted are the ordinary men and women who are required to complete the form". Then he says that there is a danger of frivolous answers while other people would just put the form behind the clock on the mantelpiece and not be bothered with it at all.ËÜfo2ÝÜepÜcf5,8,8.5ÝÜnhÜcf1ÝÜixSir John KingmanËÜrsÜfeÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I disagree with him for several reasons. One is the argument about the need, not just the need but the use. The importance at the heart of this is the population estimate and the fact that we have to reflect all societal and demographic changes that are happening in order to be able to capture the population. Kids do spend time with more than one parent, people do have more than one address and there is much more mobility, so being able to capture that is essential. What is also essential is that we make it easy for people to fill in. One of the changes in the proposals for 2011 is a redesign of the form. You were discussing earlier the increase from three to four pages per person. That is partly because we have simplified the layout. You will remember from when you completed your 2001 form that on each page you were asked to fill in three columns of questions. Professor Rees was talking earlier about people not answering some questions and that was because we have some evidence that particularly questions in that middle column got missed out, it was hard work for people to fill it in. What we have done is taken the opportunity to redesign it using research evidence from academics and elsewhere, and our own testing procedures, to say, Let's make this easy for people to fill in". The layout has changed, the ordering has changed, and the internet will help with that as well, of course. That is the reason for some of the increase in length. It is about getting the population right and making it easy for people to fill in.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ75 Mr Walker:Ì Final questions on the bedroom. If you decided you did not want to fill in the bedroom question, for example, you felt uncomfortable with it, could you just leave it blank?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý You have an obligation to fill in the census form. The only question that is voluntary is religion.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ76 Mr Walker:Ì You feel uncomfortable about filling in the number of bedrooms, so on the day you fill in the form you move out the bed, you stick a kitchen table in there and call it your dining room, then you have only got a three-bedroom house or a four-bedroom house or a two-bedroom house. You cannot legislate against that, can you?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý No, you cannot.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ77 Mr Walker:Ì It is actually how people determine the use of their rooms that counts.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý It is.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ78 Mr Walker:Ì For anybody who felt uncomfortable about doing that, move in an air-conditioning unit and call it a utility room for a day or move in a table and call it a dining room for a day.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Or call it a study rather than a bedroom. You cannot legislate for that, which is why there is testing. The other point that was in that letter that it has not been tested with members of the public is simply not right, it has been tested with thousands.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ79 Mr Walker:Ì If politicians wanted to assuage the concerns of their constituents, what we should do is say, Look, if you are concerned about these questions there are a number of methods you can deploy on the day you answer them that allows you not to answer them in reality". We could say that to our constituents, we could help them overcome their concerns without them feeling if they did not answer these questions honestly they would get an enormous fine from you or whoever does the fining.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Glen is desperate to get in here.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý One of the things that we do in our testing is we ask people whether or not they feel comfortable or have any objections to answering these questions. That has been tested for all of these. People are not uncomfortable with this. The newspapers choose to make something of it, but generally the population are quite happy to say how many bedrooms there are in their property.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ80 Mr Walker:Ì I can see a website, How to dodge the census without actually being in jeopardy of getting a fine" springing up. I can see some civil rights group getting frightfully excited about this.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I can imagine all sorts of websites springing up between now and 2011 around the census. You might well be right. One of our challenges is to try and get the right public message out first of all that this information is valuable, secondly that there is an obligation to fill in the form and, thirdly, that it is confidential.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ81 Mr Walker:Ì You might be losing that battle. The problem is there is huge distrust about government at the moment, and it will always be there for a variety of reasons which I will not rehearse again, and unfortunately you are seen as part of government and yet another part of government taking a look under people's duvets and inside their bedrooms. You cannot escape that because perception is reality. If Ücf2ÝThe TelegraphÜcf1Ý calls me a crook, I am a crook, there is nothing I can do about that. If Ücf2ÝThe TelegraphsÜcf1Ý says you are snooping, you are snooping and, guess what, there is probably nothing you can do about that. The battle has probably already been lost.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I am nowhere near as pessimistic as that. The battle is not lost.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì Just check the results for Broxbourne when they come in!ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ82 David Heyes:Ì I would like to go back to income. We have heard from leading academics, from representatives of the business and commercial sectors and we know that local authorities, I guess government departments, would want to see income data collected as part of the census. Certainly MPs would want it. I think I would like to have better quality income information as part of my argument that I make for resources for the most deprived parts of my constituency. There is that huge weight of opinion that says you should do it. Why have you resisted it again?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I will start and, again, Glen can provide some of the detail. I recognise the case that has been made. There is no doubt a lot of people have said that they would like to have an income question on the census and a lot of people have said they would like other questions as well, but income in particular, so we recognise that need. I mentioned earlier that among the criteria for deciding how much of a priority this is, and it does come down to priorities, is are there alternative sources and how good is the information that could be collected. Again, there was extensive testing on an income question. There was a difference in response rates. I think it was, and Glen can correct me, about a three-percentage point difference in response on the postal test when we had a split sample, households sent a form with an income question and households sent a form without an income question. Given what I said about what the core aim of the census is and what our key determination is, which is the population estimate, then anything that is a three percentage point difference immediately raises some concerns. In addition to that, there has been testing with interviewing and talking to members of the public about how they felt following the 2007 test and what do they think about each of the questions. Of those who objected to a testing, income was the single biggest complaint that they had. Of those who objected to any question at all, more than half of them said it was the income question that was causing them difficulties. There is a third element which is about the kind of work that we have been doing since 2001_it was not included in 2001 where there was also a demand_which is about producing the kind of thing Professor Rees was talking about, small area estimates modelled and so on, and looking to see what administrative data either in DWP or in HMRC could be made available. It was all of those things combined, plus some concern about the quality of the income information given that this is a householder who is responsible for collecting information. Imagine lots of students living together and having to go round saying, What is your income? What is your income" in order to add it up to give a very broad income band. All of those things combined convinced us that we did not want to propose the income question.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I would add a couple of things. One is that for those people in the test where there was an income question, so half of the sample, of those people who did return their questionnaire there was a higher level of non-response to that particular income question than there was for the other questions. People might be willing to give us the form back but with a lot of blanks on the income question. As part of our post-2007 test evaluation survey asked the question again to a number of people. We went back to 400 households and we asked for a second time, What is your income?" and something like a third of those people gave a different answer the second time round. This is a hard question for people to get right. This was when there was a sources of income question attached to it as well giving them a reminder to include all the different types of income, whether from benefits, pensions, salary, share dividends, investments, whatever it was. The two questions added together takes up quite a lot of space. There is a lot of non-response. There is a lot of objection to it. It is not particularly good quality information and, as Jil said, the key thing was it suggested a 2.7 percentage point drop in response. Can we afford to take that risk? This was in a voluntary survey when only half the people responded anyway. What would that level of non-response have been for the 50 % less compliant half of the population?ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ83 David Heyes:Ì I follow the logic of what you are saying. You would be right to be concerned about the weight of objections that you get, concerns about the quality and the availability of alternative sources of information, those are all good arguments and were exactly the arguments that were overridden when you included a migration question in the census. Why do those arguments weigh so heavily against including income and yet they are not such a problem when it comes to looking at whether or not to include questions on migration?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý We do not have evidence that suggests the response rate would be affected by_ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ84 David Heyes:Ì The discussion earlier suggested that there were very similar objections from the same community of academics, the business community and so on, whose arguments you rejected in relation to income.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý There are an awful lot of opinions on this subject, so what we have to do is try and complement those opinions with some hard evidence. That is why we do tests and all of this research. In the research that we have done with these migration questions there is not evidence that it would materially affect response rates. For example, we have done a postal test running to tens of thousands of people, half of the questions included migration questions and half of the questions did not, and there was no discernible difference in overall response rates, whereas for income there was a clear difference. That is why we have taken a different position.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ85 David Heyes:Ì Jil mentioned earlier that she meets regularly with her counterparts internationally and they do not have the same problem with it. Why is this easy in Australia, Scotland and various other places around the world?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý It is fascinating, is it not?ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ86 David Heyes:Ì It is not a problem for them. Why is that?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý It is interesting. The results that we found about the depression impact on response rate before the 2011 census, ie the tests we have done this time, mirror the picture we got before 2001. One of the things we do know is that there is an anecdote in statistical circles about what are the questions that it is difficult to ask in different countries, and certainly in the UK even on our household surveys income is seen as one of the most difficult areas for us to investigate. There are lower response rates to income questions on surveys in the UK than in some other countries. I do not know whether that answers it but it is part of the picture.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ87 David Heyes:Ì Just one final question on this. We have heard several times this morning that there are potentially good alternative sources of income data available that would serve this purpose and you used the phrase could be made available". From the broader concerns of the ONS I would have thought this would be extremely important information for you to have. What action is taking place to substitute for the fact that you are not collecting it through the census?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý There are detailed income questions on household surveys. In fact, there are a couple of surveys that are dedicated to exploring that in detail, which is what you need to do to get good quality income information. That is being used to model. What that does not do is provide detailed local information.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ88 David Heyes:Ì You cannot drill down to the individual district.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Exactly. What has happened with that is we have used the information from higher geographic areas about incomes from surveys alongside information from other sources to estimate what the average income is likely to be in different areas across the country. That is one of the innovations since 2001 because we did not have the income question in 2001. Alongside that there has been a big increase in the amount of administrative data that is available for small areas. For example, on a neighbourhood statistics website there is information for small areas about benefit recipients and there is some information from HMRC, but it is not complete because they do not have a complete picture, at certainly smaller areas than was there in 2001.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ89 David Heyes:Ì The way you describe it feels patchy. It certainly is not doing what you were suggesting might be a good alternative, which is to acquire the total data in a different way, maybe from HMRC or wherever. Are there any movements being made towards achieving that volume data?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý It certainly is an objective of National Statistics as a whole. What it will not do is what Keith Dugmore was saying, being able to understand how that then relates to some of the other questions that are in the census, relating at the household level, if you like, what is the relationship between income and the other characteristics that are collected. It will only do it at the area level, whatever the smallest geographic area is that the aggregate data can be provided for while protecting confidentiality.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ90 Mr Prentice:Ì Why did they go ahead in Scotland then? You have given us all the reasons why it is impossible or very difficult to collect data which is meaningful in England and Wales, why did they go ahead in Scotland?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý There is also an issue of prioritisation. We decided that what we really needed to do was focus on the population estimate and those questions in England and Wales we need for population, so there is a certain element of choice. There is also the question about what is the evidence that you are basing the judgments about quality on. The evidence in England and Wales is as we have described; in Scotland their test was different.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ91 Mr Prentice:Ì Prioritisation is a red herring really, it is whether the data that is collected is accurate and meaningful, and you have told us about a 50 % response rate when you ask people to give details of their income, and despite all that the people in Scotland are going to press ahead.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I think that was a different point that Glen was making actually.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Scotland are pressing ahead with a household income question rather than an individual income question. Amongst a large number of people we have tested reactions and difficulties with answering a question about household income as well and the feedback we have got, which Jil has already alluded to, is that it is difficult to know what others in the household earn, it is difficult to ask that question.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ92 Mr Prentice:Ì I understand that you are talking about household income, but you speak to the people in Scotland and you will have expressed all the reservations you have about getting accurate data, so why are they going ahead? Are they saying to you, No, we disagree with you, Mr Watson. We think that we will get accurate data at a household level and that is why we are asking the question"?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý They think they will get something meaningful and accurate. Our research for England and Wales, and I think some of our testing has been on larger samples of the population, suggests otherwise.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ93 Mr Prentice:Ì How strange.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Ultimately we have to both make our own recommendations to our own separate legislatures.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ94 Mr Prentice:Ì Is there a problem about Scotland going one way and England and Wales going the other? We have two censuses asking different questions. That must create headaches.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý In fact, we have got three census offices because Northern Ireland is a separate census office as well. One of the things that my predecessor and now me, with the heads of the census offices in Scotland and Northern Ireland, do is talk to each other very regularly, and we have a UK Census Committee with a view to harmonising wherever possible, so the core of the questions are the same, the census day will be the same and so on. There are users and, indeed, some international obligations to provide UK level data.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ95 Mr Prentice:Ì But harmonisation is going out the window, is it not, because you have got this income question that everyone is very exercised about.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý There are some differences because of different user needs in different parts of the UK. That is what happens when you have different census offices, they are responding to their user needs and we are responding to ours, and also to our circumstances. For example, some of the questions about why we are so focused on the population estimate, some of the questions about mobility, numbers of languages spoken and all of that is a stronger imperative in England and Wales than in Scotland and Northern Ireland, for example.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ96 Mr Prentice:Ì I know Kelvin is desperate to get in. He is straining at the leash!ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I would just add one point on your question. The feeling in England and Wales is we really cannot afford to take the risks with response rates. I am not saying Scotland can, but Scotland did not suffer the same difficulties with response rates being too low in some areas and challenges and studies after the census from many local authorities challenging the results. Their evidence suggests that they have not got a problem and are prepared to take the risk, and we just cannot really afford to take the risk.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ97 Mr Prentice:Ì On this issue of testing, you tested in Newham, am I right?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý No.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ98 Mr Prentice:Ì You tested some questions in Newham. I read that somewhere.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý No.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý We are currently doing a rehearsal in Newham. The 2007 test was in five local authorities, but not Newham. The testing we have done in various postal tests, various cognitive tests, has been countrywide over the last four years.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ99 Mr Prentice:Ì In those five areas is there one with a high non-white population?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Camden.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ100 Mr Prentice:Ì What is the percentage of the non-white population in Camden? Just take a guess. There are only five, you must know.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I do not know. I would be guessing a number.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ101 Mr Prentice:Ì A gentle guess then.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I am not sure I want to.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ102 Chairman:Ì I think it is a little unfair even to ask a statistician.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I have to say there is a risk as National Statistician being asked a question like that and giving the wrong number.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì Of course there is.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ103 Mr Prentice:Ì It was just that we had a big debate earlier about intended length of stay and whether it was meaningful to put that question in the census. I am interested in you saying that all of these questions are tested to destruction. You take a sample and you test them and look at the response rate. I just wonder what the people in Camden said about this question on intended length of stay where you thought it was worth including.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý If my memory serves me correctly, the question on intended length of stay was not in the 2007 test.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ104 Mr Prentice:Ì So it has never been tested?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý It was a question that was added later and it was tested thoroughly in postal tests to 10,000 or 20,000 households at the start of last year after the 2007 tests.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ105 Mr Prentice:Ì In a postal test, but in a question like this you really want to test it in an area with a large non-white population. There is no point sending it to Tunbridge Wells or somewhere like that.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý We picked an area that did have a relatively high level of immigration in the last decade or so.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ106 Mr Prentice:Ì Which area was that?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I think we went for somewhere in the East Midlands. I think we went for Northampton where there has been quite a lot of immigration, particularly from Eastern Europe.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ107 Mr Prentice:Ì And people filled in that question, there was no problem?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý There was no difference in response rates in terms of those who returned the questionnaires with those questions and those without the questions. There were some people who returned the questionnaires who did not fill in that question. We have done cognitive testing as well with a number of people from different backgrounds, recent immigrants, more settled immigrants, and generally the feedback from the cognitive testing was that people would be willing to fill in the questions and give us that information.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ108 Chairman:Ì When you were talking about second homes you said that there was no pressure to put those questions in, so obviously the pressure to have questions in is a big contributor to whether they get in or not after you do the testing. Where did the pressure come from to ask the intention to stay question?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý It came from ourselves. It came from our experience in the 2001 census, and the experience following the 2001 census in discussing with some local authorities the difference between what they thought their population was and our estimate of the population from the census, this difference between the usual long-term resident and people who were there relatively short-term. It came from the massive amount of work that has been done since then on looking at the improvements to migration statistics. It is a combination of getting the census population estimate right and making it easy by, If you are going to be here for three months or more, tell us". That is a very simple instruction. It also came from the increasing desire to produce estimates about short-term migration. There is an intention to stay question included in surveys which are used in migration estimation. It is not dreamt up out of this would be a good idea".ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ109 Kelvin Hopkins:Ì Following from Gordon's questions_I am fascinated by this_you said earlier that Britain was very different from other countries in their willingness to say what their income is, or household income, but it seems it is more England and Wales because in Scotland they are quite prepared to let it hang out and boldly say what their income is, like Gordon would I am sure, but it is the precious upright English, like me, who have a problem with this. Is there a cultural or psychological problem which needs to be addressed?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I do not know is the answer. All I know is what the evidence is.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ110 Mr Prentice:Ì Britain is changing very rapidly. Is there a case for a five-year census? There are countries, like Canada, which have these snapshots every five years and we have heard people say that so much has changed in ten years the census gets out of date very rapidly. Is there a case for a five-year census?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Certainly it is changing very rapidly. One of the projects that we have started is to look at_we have called it Beyond 2011"_the 2011 census as vital and a benchmark, but then what we have to do is say what happens after that and how rapidly are things changing, what are the areas where we need more regular benchmarks. That may or may not be through a census, it may be through better use of administrative data, through big surveys, a whole range of possibilities.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ111 Mr Prentice:Ì The Government estimated that 13,000 people from Eastern Europe would come into the United Kingdom and the reality was 600,000. If change is going to be that rapid then you have got to get the picture.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý The census is not the only source that we have already, of course. The population estimates and migration estimates are captured through other sources intercensally. The reason the census is important is that it provides that benchmark, that point in time, everybody on the same day, the same questions. It is then supplemented annually, or more or less frequently, with other sources. The question is, what do we need to do for the next decade by way of providing the rapid information that is needed to measure the changes that are happening.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ112 Mr Prentice:Ì You think about these things all the time and you must have a view as to whether it would be a good idea to have a five year census, like Canada, or whether you should stick with the ten year census and all this other information that can be collected from other sources.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý There is nothing magical about five years at the moment. What I would like to see is the 2011 census as the core, high quality benchmark that we can then supplement with administrative information increasingly, and surveys, so that you have got a much more rapid view of how things are changing. Whether as part of that you need some kind of exercise in the intercensal period after five years, six years or whatever it is, to benchmark is an open question.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ113 Chairman:Ì Just tell us why we cannot have a sexual orientation question?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý For the reasons I said at the beginning. Partly this is about balancing the user need and the user case, relevancy of other sources and public acceptability. Evidence of the testing is that it does depress response rates. We have to be able to explain to people why it is there. This is the essence of it: people need to be able to understand why the question is there, how the information is going to be used and that it is going to be kept secure. There were some concerns in a household form about the householder being responsible for collecting information on sexual identity from other household members, or those household members then having to say, I don't want to tell you, can I have my own separate form, please". There were concerns about the quality and concerns from some of the copies of interviews that it would have an impact on response, in a nutshell.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ114 Mr Prentice:Ì You have got a new question on the type of central heating.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Yes.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ115 Mr Prentice:Ì Why is it necessary to have a question on the type of central heating?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Can you remember what the case was for the question on what type of central heating?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý The question in previous censuses has been, Do you have central heating or not?" It was no longer a good way of distinguishing between different levels of poverty, deprivation, housing standards, because 99 point something, a very high percentage of places, now have some form of central heating. There was an opportunity to ask something that was more relevant and useful in today's society. Given the interest in fuel poverty, in sustainability and different forms of heating, a case was made by central government, and I think by local government as well, to use this space to ask a question about the type of central heating.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ116 Mr Prentice:Ì So whether it is gas or coal-fired?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Whether it is gas or coal-fired, exactly.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝMr Prentice:Ì How strange.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝMr Walker:Ì Can you have electric central heating? I think you can, can you not?ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì You can.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ117 Mr Walker:Ì If you have electric central heating, do you have to get in touch with your supplier and say, Do you supply me with electricity from nuclear power, coal power or gas power?", because all those things produce electricity?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Let me tell you the six options: no central heating; gas; electric, including storage heaters; oil; solid fuel, for example wood, coal; and other central heating. That has been worked on in consultation with the central government policy departments who have requested this information.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ118 Mr Walker:Ì You do not like getting rid of questions, do you?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý We have got rid of some from 2001.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ119 Mr Walker:Ì Have you? Gosh. It seems when they become redundant you find a new way of making them relevant.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý There are some that have gone from 2001. For example, there was a question on_ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ120 Mr Walker: Ücf1ÝDo you have a horse?"ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Lowest floor level of accommodation. People who are living in blocks, What is the lowest floor level of accommodation?" That has gone completely. There are some other examples.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ121 Mr Walker:Ì Are you going to start asking people what type of car they have, electric or diesel?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý No plans to do so.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝMr Walker:Ì But we could make a good case for its inclusion!ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝMr Prentice:Ì What percentage of households in England and Wales do not have central heating? In my constituency quite a lot of people do not have central heating. What is the figure in England and Wales?ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ122 Chairman:Ì That is one of those unfair questions again.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I would prefer to let the Committee know afterwards.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ123 Mr Prentice:Ì It is not unfair because this is a new question and you would know we were going to ask you about the new questions in the census. You just explained you wanted to know about the type of central heating because so many households now have central heating. My question, I think, is a fair one, which is how many households in England and Wales do not have central heating?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý I make no comment on whether it is a fair question or not, but either way the answer is the same, I am afraid I do not know and would prefer to write to the Committee.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ124 Chairman:Ì That is why I say it is an unfair question, because you are expected to give a statistical answer and you do not know necessarily what it is and if you gave it unreliably you would be mocked. I think you are well protected there. So we do not end on central heating_nothing wrong with central heating, we have gas_can I ask you about national identity. This is another one that is coming in fresh. I do not know the detail of the question but my slight worry here would be that if people have got to choose a national identity we know from other sources that many people see themselves as having multiple identities, and if people are asked to describe themselves as Welsh, Scottish, British, many people would want to say, I'm Welsh and I'm British" or I'm Scottish and I'm British". Is that possible?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý You can do that. We have got the advantage of having the dress rehearsal form in front of us. The question says, Tick all that apply".ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ125 Chairman:Ì So you can do the permutations, okay. How catastrophic would it be if politicians started playing about with this in the next period and started suggesting that questions should go and some should come?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý We have got a timetable. Census day is 27 March 2011. We need the regulations in place in order that we can print the questionnaire, set up the systems, finalise the arrangements and have the authority to recruit and train the 30,000-odd people that we will need in order to carry the census out. Any changes after spring of next year are going to introduce both cost and risk and, therefore, are likely to be very serious. Up until that time it is for Parliament to decide.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ126 Chairman:Ì If Parliament, for whatever reason, said, We would like an income question" or We would like a sexual orientation question", you would just groan, grit your teeth and get on with it?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý I think there is a procedural point, which Glen was going to remind me about, which is that this is a strange Order in that it is partly subject to affirmative resolution and partly to negative resolution, so the only way of adding would be to reject the Order and then to start again. The bit that is prescribed by the 1920 Census Act is the negative resolution and the bit that is new or additional, or not covered there, is affirmativeÜfu3Ý.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ127 Chairman:Ì My understanding is it would be possible for a government, and it can only be a government that can do it, to put down an amendment.ËËÜfo3ÝEv 27ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Exactly.ËÜjf13ÝÜcf3ÝQ128 Chairman:Ì If Government was prevailed upon that there ought to be an income question or a sexual orientation question they could put down an amendment and then you would have to put up with it, would you not?ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMs Matheson:Ücf1Ý Yes.ËÜjf14ÝÜcf4ÝMr Watson:Ücf1Ý Can I add one point of clarification. Some people have made the case for a sexual identity question, for example, to be voluntary in the way that the religion question is. If that were to be the decision of Parliament then that would require an amendment to the primary legislation, the 1920 Census Act would have to be amended.ËÜjf12ÝÜcf3ÝChairman:Ì That sounds like a shot across the bows to me. Helpful information, as we said. That has been interesting. Thank you for coming along and talking through this again. Thank you very much indeed.ËÜjf90ÝÜjf22ÝÜte