Statistical spin out of control? PDF Print E-mail
Ray Thomas, 22 May 2006

John Healey MP
John Healey MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and 'minister for government misinformtion'


A new division is emerging in the Cabinet.   On the one side is John Healey, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who has acquired a new role as a kind of minister for government misinformation.   On the other side is Jack Straw, now relieved of his responsibilities as Foreign Secretary, who can reasonably claim to the to be the Labour Party’s leading authority on statistics.

John Healey’s role comes from his self-confessed authorship of the Government’s Consultation Document entitled Independence for Statistics.  The Labour Party pledge to create an independent statistical service in their 1997 election manifesto did not include any detail.  So the pledge cannot be said to have prompted high expectations.  But it is difficult to say positive things about this Consultation Document that promises to make the pledge part of law.  The Document prints the words ‘Independence for statistics’ at the foot of each of its 35 pages, but does not offer any explanation of the meaning of independence.   Instead the Document tells pulls wool over our eyes by pretending that statistical independence has already been achieved.
I hope that this Consultation Document is the least coherent of the papers produced in what should be dying stages of the Blair regime.    If there is any Government paper less coherent than this document it will surely mark an unprecedented nadir in the quality of government documents intended to stimulate public discussion?

Jack Straw
Perhaps John Healy thought he could get away with the evasions of the Consultation Document because Jack Straw was busy in the Foreign Office in a luvvy-duvvy with Condoleezza Rice.  But in the reshuffle Straw became leader of the House.  Jack Straw, surprisingly to many, is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.   And in 1995 Straw actually gave a talk to the Society about the meaning of independence of statistics.   The Consultation Document blatantly deceives by failing to discuss or to give any reference to Jack Straw’s paper.

The 1995 paper to the RSS shows Straw at his best.   It is a thoughtful discussion backed with a useful bit of research indicating the growth of the statistical content of newspaper articles.   Straws’ paper is not one to agree or disagree with.   Its strength is that it spells out the issues.   A statistical service independent of the government of the day would have to be staffed by public servants not civil servants.   It would be serve the needs of the public, Parliament and government - in that order.   The statistical service would be responsible to, and have its budget controlled by, a Committee of Parliament _ not the Government of the day.   

Jack Straw’s paper has no precedent.   It is the only substantial paper ever written by a leading politician on the government of statistics.  A Consultation Document on an independent statistical service without any reference to Jack Straw’s ideas is a snub to the electorate, to the Labour Party, and to Jack Straw.   

Descriptions of society
Straw’s paper took for granted that official statistics give only a partial view of society.   A basic contribution by the Straw’s paper was to distinguish the statistical needs of governments, and the Government of the day, from those of the public.   These distinctions are denied by the Consultation Document.  

The Consultation Document emphasises that the aim of National Statistics is to provide "an accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive and meaningful description of society".   But the Document has a totalitarian flavour in failing to acknowledge that alternative descriptions might exist.   It is implicit in the Consultation Document that National Statistics would give a picture for the Government of the day and the public alike.   

The Consultation Document refers to statistics as a public good, but there is not a glimmer of recognition that the public might have different view of what constitutes a comprehensive description of society from that given by official statistics.   The Document seems to demonstrate that the Government have become so immersed in spin that they have become unaware of the existence of their own spin and that the Treasury has lost the ability to distinguish between the image they work to create and reality.  

Government entwinement with statistics
It cannot be denied that there have been extensive public discussions about statistics since 1997.  A number of large tomes have been published by the Office for National Statistics and by the Statistics Council.   A Framework for National Statistics was drawn up and the existing Code of Practice massively extended.   But these developments have been largely concerned with consolidating a relationship between professional statisticians, represented by the Royal Statistical Society, and the Government Statistical Service.   

Any progress towards an independent service as defined by Jack Straw is difficult to detect.  The general trend over the period since 1997 has been in the opposite direction.  Official statistics and the Government become more closely intertwined.    The setting of statistical targets has become automatic and routine – a standard and expected part of managerialism in the public sector.   Under Labour statistical targets approved by Government have obtruded on the daily lives of citizens more than ever before.   

A new twist was the establishment within the Office for National Statistics of a unit for measuring the output of government services.   The Government is worried that increased expenditure in areas such as health services is not counted as a benefit in economic statistics.   The Centre for Measurement of Government Activity is intended to remedy this omission by making estimates of the value of the benefits of public services.  So official statistics tell citizens not just about their work performance but also about how much they are better off they are as a result of the activity of the Government.

Revival of interest
It had seemed that the Government and the Labour Party wanted to forget about the issue of independence.  The Office for National Statistics was not mentioned in the leaflet ‘300 gains from our Labour Government’ that was distributed to party members early in 2004.  Nor was the ONS mentioned in the list of 50 top achievements published in October 2005.

It was therefore a slight surprise to learn from Gordon Brown that the Government had not forgotten about the idea of an independent service.  The revival of the idea of independence may be in anticipation of a leadership contest.   Gordon Brown, with statistical justification, claims that under his leadership Britain has enjoyed a longer period of continuous period of economic growth than ever previously recorded.   It may be that he would also like to claim that the statistics cannot be questioned because they are produced independently of his government?

The Consultation Document attempts to reify its subject matter by repetition of the word independence and by discussion using laudatory words and phrases  – such as code of conduct, integrity, and quality _ that have been associated with the consolidation of the Government Statistical Service and professional statisticians.   But this consolidation does not deal with the wisdom expressed in Jack Straw’s paper.   

Official statistics give a picture of reality.  If there is no means of challenging that picture we are institutionalizing spin and taking a step towards an Orwellian society.   Will Jack Straw, now in a position of power, assert the excellent ideas he put forward when he was in opposition?   

Nor does the consolidation of the GSS with professional statisticians and the deal with falling trust in statistics and in the Government.   I hope to come back to that topic next week.



Ray Thomas is Research Fellow in Official Statistics in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes.

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