5 Misuse of official statistics
40. The Statistics Authority has a role in monitoring
the use and abuse of official statistics, and intervening where
judged necessary. Its statement of strategy has a strategy priority
of "trustworthiness" and states that it
[...] will speak on matters of statistical controversy,
reporting publicly to Parliament, especially where there are concerns
about political involvement in the production or publication of
official statistics, or about damage to the integrity of official
statistics through misrepresentation. The Authority will continue
to give priority to investigating any significant concerns in
these areas and reporting those findings publicly to Parliament.[42]
Jil Matheson told us
The intervention of the Statistics Authority is very
important in sending the signal within Departments that this is
something that will be taken seriously and that they have a role
in alerting Ministers, special advisers and senior officials that
there is potentially a Code compliance issue.[43]
41. The Statistics Authority has not been shy
about addressing some issues of significant public policy importance.
For example, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health raised concerns
with the Statistics Authority in November 2012 about government
claims about a real-terms increase in health spending. The Statistics
Authority wrote to the Secretary of State for Health in December
2012, stating that real-terms expenditure on the NHS had "changed
little" and requesting that the Government clarify statements
made on the matter.[44]
42. On a different issue, youth unemployment,
the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Employment
wrote to the Statistics Authority about a claim made by the Leader
of the Opposition that "only Spain has higher numbers of
young unemployed than the UK". The Statistics Authority replied
stating that while this claim was factually true, "accepted
statistical practice is that comparing unemployment rates between
countries is preferable to comparing absolute numbers" and
included a table of figures which showed that in terms of rates
the UK was not high relatively.[45]
This and other similar correspondence is published on the Statistics
Authority's website.[46]
43. The evidence received for this inquiry was
broadly supportive of the extent to which the Chair of the Statistics
Authority had intervened in public to raise issues relating to
the misuse of statistics.[47]
The Royal Statistical Society commented "[the Statistics
Authority's former Chair's] interventions were generally effective,
established the Authority as a force to be reckoned with and were
clearly uncomfortable at times for those concerned. Further, the
Authority appeared even handed between government, opposition
and other politicians".[48]
44. Where the Chair of the Statistics
Authority has judged that there has been misuse of official statistics,
we support his independence and his right to intervene. We are
grateful to both the current and former Chairs for their role
in upholding the integrity of government statistics and in therefore
striving towards achieving higher levels of public trust in government
statistics. It would be prudent, given the controversy of the
areas in which the Authority intervenes, to reduce the scope for
future misunderstandings, if the Authority set out why it chooses
to intervene publicly on some issues and not on many others that
are raised.
42 UK Statistics Authority, Statement of Strategy,
February 2013 Back
43
Q137 Back
44
Letter from Andy Burnham MP to Andrew Dilnot, 1 November 2012,
and letter from Andrew Dilnot to Jeremy Hunt MP, 4 December 2012,
accessible at www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk Back
45
Letter from Harriett Baldwin MP to Andrew Dilnot, 31 January 2013
and letter from Andrew Dilnot to Harriett Baldwin MP, 26 February
2013 Back
46
At www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk, Reports and Correspondence Back
47
See for example, Demographics User Group (Ev 42), Royal Statistical
Society (Ev 44) and Full Fact (Ev 46) Back
48
Ev 44 Back
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