Employment: Statistics
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment her Department has made of the (a) transparency and (b) independence of the process used by the Office for National Statistics to revise historic employment data; and what discussions she has had with the Office for National Statistics on the revisions made since July 2024.
Answered by Lucy Rigby
The ONS is an independent organisation and is accountable to the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) board and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) for the transparency and independence of its statistics. The Government trusts economic statistics produced by the ONS. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is responsible for ensuring that official statistics meet the standards set out in the Code of Practice, including the requirements set out in the Code’s Standards for Official Statistics that:
- ‘Producers must lead responsibly and make impartial decisions about statistics, under the direction and authority of the Chief Statistician/Head of Profession for Statistics
- ‘Producers must release statistics in a transparent way.’
- Producers must be ‘open about quality’ and must ‘prominently explain the quality of the statistics’.
The OSR continues periodically to review labour market statistics from the Labour Force Survey against the Code of Practice for Statistics. Their most recent report, published in February 2025, highlighted ONS’s efforts to ensure transparency.
Revisions to the Labour Force Survey employment data since July 2024, such as those relating to the reweighting of the survey in December 2024, have been communicated by the ONS publicly. The ONS continues to advise caution when interpreting changes in the Labour Force Survey over the past two years due to the effects of methodological changes. The Treasury is engaged with the ONS’ processes on data quality monitoring, with engagement at every level.
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