Documents considered by the Committee on 12 October 2016 Contents

10Statistics: Persons and households data

Summary and Committee’s conclusions

Committee’s assessment	Politically important
Committee’s decision	Not cleared from scrutiny; further information requested
Document details	Proposed Regulation establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households
Legal base	Article 338(1) TFEU, ordinary legislative procedure, QMV
Department	Office for National Statistics
Document Numbers	(38029), 11774/16 + ADDs 1–3, COM(16) 551

10.1The Commission proposes, in the context of the European Statistical System (in which EU and EEA/EFTA Member States cooperate), a Regulation to introduce Integrated European Social Statistics that is, a common framework for EU statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples. The framework would cover seven domains (surveys)—labour market, income and living conditions, health, education and training, use of information and communication technologies, time use, and consumption.

10.2The Government tells us that, subject to the exit negotiations, it will support the main objectives of the proposal (the modernisation of social statistics and an integrated approach to survey design). It notes that as long as the UK is obliged to, or otherwise chooses to, produce social statistics for the European Statistical System there are clear benefits over the current EU statutory framework. However, it draws our attention to several reservations it has about the proposed Regulation, which it will seek to resolve during negotiation of the proposal.

10.3We should like the Government to tell us whether it intends to seek continued participation in the European Statistical System as part of the Brexit deal. While keeping this document under scrutiny, we should also like to hear from the Government about progress in addressing the concerns it has expressed to us about the aspects of the proposed Regulation, as set out in paragraph 10.13 below.

Full details of the documents

Proposed Regulation establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples: (38029), 11774/16 + ADDs 1–3, COM(16) 551.

Background

10.4The Commission’s statistical office, Eurostat, and the National Statistical Authorities of EU and EEA/EFTA Member States cooperate in the European Statistical System (ESS). The ESS requires adoption of European Statistical Programmes (ESP) of duration of up to five years. The current programme covers the period 2013–17. The ESP provides for the framework for development production and dissemination of EU statistics, the main fields of activity and the objectives of the actions envisaged. It sets out the priority statistical requirements from the users’ perspective, balances them with the resources available in the ESS and takes account of the burden on respondents to statistical inquiries. The ESP is delivered through legislation or by written agreements between Eurostat and the National Statistical Authorities. Eurostat sets out annual programmes of work for each year of the programme, with timetables for new legislation and statistical initiatives.

10.5At present the social statistics outputs of the ESP are derived from seven separate surveys, each with its own legal basis, standards, classifications, precision requirements, transmission schedules, etc. The surveys are carried out in each Member State with the aim of EU harmonisation of national outputs. For some of the surveys the topics, variables and modules are specified, and for others the requirements for statistical results are specified. But there is little in the way of cross-survey integration or coordination of data collection across Member States. This fragmentation means that it is difficult to modernise European Social Statistics as a whole to meet changing user demand at the EU level.

The document

10.6Since 2011, Eurostat and the other members of the ESS have been working on a new design for European Social Statistics. Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS) is the outcome of this work. This proposed Regulation would provide a common framework for EU statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples, a single framework for seven domains of social statistics, that is, IESS.

10.7Each domain would correspond approximately to the seven existing social surveys, with the single framework specifying:

the seven domains (surveys) as being labour market, income and living conditions, health, education and training, use of information and communication technologies, time use, and consumption;
the topics to be covered in detail in each domain;
how delegated legislation will specify detailed variables for each topic;
the precision requirements of the surveys (sample sizes);
the periodicity of the surveys;
how the surveys can be changed or added to over time;
transmission of individual de-identified survey responses to Eurostat;
the design of data quality reports;
arrangements for pilot studies to explore new topics; and
financing arrangements.

10.8The seven surveys to be incorporated into the seven IESS domains are:

LFS: Labour Force Survey;
EU-SILC: EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions;
AES: the Adult Education Survey;
EHIS: the European Health Interview Survey;
ICT (HH): Information and Communications Technology (Household);
HBS: the Household Budget Survey (known as the Living Costs and Food Survey in the UK); and
TUS: the Time Use Survey.

10.9The proposal:

does not specify the roles of Member States or Eurostat in the production and publication of ESS at EU, national, or subnational levels, nor does it specify any particular statistics to be published;
envisages feasibility studies and pilot studies which would include examination of improvements to the comparability of data and work on the modernisation of the household budget survey and time use survey domains;
provides that participation in some of these studies would be mandatory and might receive financial support from the Commission;
provides for commencement of the new IESS framework to be in 2019; and
includes provisions for derogations which, if granted through Implementing Acts, would allow more time to adapt to the new requirements and some variation in how the common methods are to be applied—a derogation of up to three years could be granted, extendable once by the same period.

The Government’s view

10.10In his Explanatory Memorandum of 12 September 2016 the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore) says that, subject to the exit negotiations, the Government will support the main objectives of the IESS proposal (the modernisation of social statistics and an integrated approach to survey design).

10.11The Minister comments that:

although the costs of implementing IESS are significant, for as long as the UK is obliged to, or otherwise chooses to, produce ESS there are clear benefits over the current EU statutory framework;
these include streamlining of the collection of data on income and living conditions through a re-designed EU-SILC survey, improvements to the sample design and exploring the use of electronic data collection on LFS and the use of supplementary administrative data sources; and
the current fractured legislative framework for these statistics has not been responsive to user needs and there is a pressing need to enhance quality and efficiency.

10.12On the financial implications the Minister says that, while the Commission suggests that integration, modernisation and harmonisation of the seven surveys would bring significant costs savings to Member States, the Office for National Statistics calculates that this proposal, if adopted, would incur an additional £7 million to £8 million of costs for the Office over the initial four year period, mainly due to the greater precision requirements of the two largest survey components (the former LFS and EU-SILC surveys).

10.13The Minister then tells us of the Government’s reservations about several aspects of the proposed Regulation and its intentions in regard to them, as follows:

at the design level, the Government is concerned that the proposal represents a change from harmonisation of specified national outputs, to harmonisation of specified national statistical actions—it prefers EU statistics to be the harmonised outputs of national statistics in Member States, rather than having the survey input design specified in EU statistical laws;
the Government opposes the Commission proposal that the Time Use Survey be incorporated into the IESS framework in 2025, as it opposes inclusion at all;
it holds that there is not sufficient evidence that there is a user demand for such statistics to be included in this integrated framework, given the costs and value for money;
the Time Use Survey is very expensive for the limited use that the UK would make of it and the Government thinks it should be voluntary in Member States, and not a specified requirement of the Regulation;
participation in feasibility studies would be compulsory under IESS, with a suggestion that these might be funded, but while feasibility studies can be helpful in developing methodologies and expertise, the Government is concerned about what this would mean in practice and how much resource would be needed to carry out these studies;
unless there is more clarity about what is expected of Member States and how many feasibility studies the UK would be expected to participate in, the Government will oppose mandatory studies unless the full costs of such studies are met by the Commission; and
the data which would be transmitted to Eurostat is specified as being individual level data (micro-data), albeit without direct personal identifiers — the Government does not agree with the obligatory transmission of all individual survey records at the de-identified (but still confidential) level of detail.

10.14The Minister informs us that:

the Government would intend to make use of the derogations, to be available through Implementing Acts, to delay the full implementation of the labour market and income and living conditions domains of the IESS; and
Eurostat has agreed in principle that derogations could be sought which, if agreed by Implementing Act, would allow the UK to provide labour market and income and living conditions domain micro-data annually, rather than quarterly, for an interim period.

10.15Finally the Minister notes that the proposed Regulation incorporates sufficient safeguards on the use of Delegated Acts, including on additional burden, in line with the April 2016 Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Regulation.

Previous Committee Reports

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14 October 2016