No help for voters from the official statisticians

Now that a General Election has been called, can we expect the Office for National Statistics to bombard  us with useful summaries to help us make up our minds? Alas, no.

Far from beavering away at special reports on crime, the economy, education, health, or the environment, the ONS and the statistical teams in government departments are explicitly forbidden from doing anything at all out of the ordinary.
 
Guidance Note J, issued by the Cabinet Office, makes it plain who’s in charge. Unless statistical releases have been pre-announced, they will be withheld. “Ad-hoc statistical releases which are not pre-announced and which may be regarded as politically sensitive should not go ahead” the guidance says.
 
It adds: “Any requests for unpublished statistics should be dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, and should be released unless an exemption applies”. But the FoI Act gives departments 20 working days to respond to requests, which means in practice that unless the requests are already in they won’t be acted on before polling day.
 
The guidance further twists the knife by imploring statisticians to be as anodyne as they possibly can in any commentaries they may write. “Commentary which would be accepted as impartial and objective analysis or interpretation at ordinary times may excite criticism during an Election” it says. Criticism from the public? Don’t be a dummy. Criticism from politicians, either Government or Government-in-waiting, is what is meant.
 
The note is silent about what happens to pre-release access during the election, which presumably means that ministers see forthcoming statistics a day before the opposition does. It does say, however, that civil servant statisticians will not normally provide face-to-face briefings to ministers.
 
And don’t think you can put in a big order for a publication already in the public domain which you might like to distribute. “Requests for small numbers of copies of leaflets, background papers or free publications which were available before the Election period may continue to be met but no bulk issues to individuals or organisations should be made without appropriate approval.”
 
Guidance Note J expresses with unusual clarity just where the power lies in UK statistics. The public pays for statistics to be gathered, but has no say in how, when, or in what form they will be published. Contrast the situation in Norway, where Statistics Norway publishes statistics and background analysis to the issues addressed in election campaigns.
 
Svein Longva, then the Director General of Statistics Norway, told the Statistics Users’ Conference in November 2003: “The response has been overwhelmingly positive and there have been no complaints that Statistics Norway interferes in the political debate or presents biased information.”
He concluded: “If our statistics are not useful when people are making their most crucial decisions as citizens, when are they?”
 
Granted, Norway knows when its elections will be held (mid-September), unlike the UK where it is the decision of the Prime Minister. That gives Statistics Norway time to prepare the presentations, which it releases daily for the last three weeks of the campaign. But there is, nevertheless, a stark distinction between the Norwegian approach and that of the UK.
 
Politicians may argue that statistics can cost elections: for example, the release of poor balance of payments figures on the eve of the 1970 election is said to have cost Labour that election. But shocks such as these are less likely if the public has been provided with a wealth of other statistical information. It is the very dearth of data that can make a rogue statistic stand out in clear relief.
 
So it’s worth looking at the calendar of releases we have already been promised in the weeks up to polling day and see which might provide ammunition to any of the parties, or provide a trap for the  unwary. Here are a selection:

  • April 13 - Trade figures for February 2010
  • April 16 - Cancer survival rates for England up to 2008
  • April 20 - Inflation figures (consumer price indices, March 2010)
  • April 20 - Public Service Productivity 1997-2008
  • April 21 - Unemployment figures
  • April 21 - Labour market statistics broken down by constituencies
  • April 22 - Retail sales for March
  • April 22 - Sickness absence rates in the NHS, October-December 2009
  • April 22 - Crime in England and Wales quarterly, year ending December 2009
  • April 28 - Public sector net borrowing
  • May 5    - Hospital-acquired infections (MRSA and C diff) March 2009-2010

They may turn out to contain no surprises, but in an election campaign it is hard to predict in advance what will prove controversial.  As little as possible, if the Cabinet Office has its way.