The
Office for National Statistics
(ONS) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a
non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of
the United Kingdom
.
Overview
It is
charged with the collection and publication of statistics related to the economy, population and
society of the United
Kingdom
at national and local levels. It functions
as the office of the
National
Statistician, who is also the UK Statistics Authority's Chief
Executive and principal statistical adviser to the UK's National
Statistics Institute and the 'Head Office' of the Government
Statistical Service (GSS).
Its main office is in Newport near the
United
Kingdom Intellectual Property Office and Tredegar House
, but another significant office is in Titchfield
in Hampshire, and an
administrative office on Myddelton Street in Islington
, the former home of the Family Records
Centre
. This office moved from Drummond Gate
in Pimlico
in
2008.
History
The ONS was formed on 1 April 1996 by the merger of the
Central Statistical Office
and the
Office
of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS). Following the
Statistics
and Registration Service Act 2007, the United Kingdom
Statistics Authority became a
non-ministerial department on the
1 April 2008.
Purpose and scope
ONS produces and publishes a wide range of the information about
Britain that can be used for social and economic policy-making as
well as painting a portrait of the country as its population
evolves over time. This is often produced in ways that make
comparison with other societies and economies possible. Much of the
data on which policy-makers depend is produced by ONS through a
combination of a decennial population census, samples and surveys
and analysis of data generated by businesses and organisations such
as the National Health Service and the register of births,
marriages and deaths. Both its publications and its
publicly-available raw data, available free, are reported and
discussed daily in the media as the basis for the public
understanding of the country in which they live.
Applications of data
The reliance on some of these data by government (both local and
national) makes ONS material central to debates about the
determination of priorities, the allocation of resources and for
decisions on interest rates or borrowing. The complexity and degree
and speed of change in the society, combined with the challenge of
measuring some of these (e.g. in relation to longevity, migration
or illness patterns or fine movements in inflation or other aspects
of national accounts) give rise to periodic debates about some of
its indicators and portrayals. Many of these rely on sources which
are outside of ONS, while some of its own sources need to be
supplemented, for example between censuses, by updated but less
rigorously-obtained information from other sources. Consequently,
unexpected or incomplete data or occasional errors or disputes
about its analysis can also attract considerable attention.
Independence
Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the
Exchequer (now Prime Minister), announced on 28 November 2005, that
the government intended to publish plans in early 2006 to legislate
to render the ONS and the statistics it generates independent of
government on a model based on the independence of the Monetary
Policy Committee of the Bank of England. This was originally a 1997
Labour manifesto commitment and was also the policy of the Liberal
Democrat and Conservative parties. Such independence was also
sought by the
Royal
Statistical Society and the
Statistics Commission.The
National Statistician would be
directly accountable to Parliament through a more
widely-constituted independent governing Statistics Board. The ONS
would be a non-ministerial government department so that the staff,
including the Director, would remain as civil servants but without
being under direct ministerial control.The National Statistician,
Karen Dunnell, stated that legislation would help improve public
trust in official statistics although the ONS already acts
independently according to its own published guidelines, the
National Statistics Code of Practice, which sets out the key
principles and standards that official statisticians, including
those in other parts of the government statistical service, are
expected to follow and uphold.
The details of the plans for independence were considered in
Parliament during the 2006/2007 session and resulted in the
Statistics
and Registration Service Act 2007. In July 2007, Sir
Michael Scholar was nominated by the
government to be the three day-a-week non-executive chairman of the
Statistics Board which, to re-establish faith in the integrity of
government statistics, will take on statutory responsibility for
oversight of UK statistics in April 2008 and oversee the Office for
National Statistics. It will also have a duty to assess all UK
government statistics. Following Gordon Brown's announcement of new
constitutional arrangements for public appointments, Sir Michael
also became, on 18 July, the first such nominee to appear before
the House of Commons Treasury Committee and to have his nomination
subject to confirmation by the House. On 7 February 2008, following
the first meeting of the shadow board, it was announced that it
will be known as the
UK
Statistics Authority (UKSA).
In addition to Sir
Michael Scholar,
the
non-executive chairman, initial members of the board
of UKSA are:
Non-executive members, appointed in open
competition:
Lord Rowe-Beddoe of
Kilgetty,
deputy chairman for governance of the Office for
National Statistics,
Professor Adrian Smith FRS,
deputy chairman with responsibility for promoting and
safeguarding the production and publication of all official
statistics across the UK, Professor
David Rhind, previously chairman of the
soon-to-be-defunct
Statistics
Commission,
Partha Dasgupta, Sir
Alan Langlands,
Moira Gibb & Professor
Steve Nickell. The Authority will also include
executive members from the Office for National Statistics,
including its chief executive, the
National Statistician,
Karen Dunnell and two other senior
officials.
Heads of the Office: National Statistician
Directors are
de facto Permanent Secretaries but do not use
that title. As the ONS previously incorporated the OPCS, the
Director was also the
Registrar
General for England and Wales, although the recent changes saw
the transfer of this function away from the ONS. In addition, he or
she is
ex officio the Head of the
Government Statistical
Service. The first Director of ONS was
Professor Tim Holt. Subsequent Directors
have had an additional title, the
National Statistician. The second
Director was
Len Cook. He was succeeded by
Karen Dunnell on 1 September 2005,
then
Jil Matheson in September 2009.
Following the implementation of the Statistics & Registration
Service Act, the
General
Register Office continues to be part of a
ministerially-accountable department and became a part of the
Home Office. The title of
Registrar-General moved with it and is no
longer held by the National Statistician.
Work of the ONS
Where data is broken down by geographical area, this is usually
done by the areas defined in the
ONS
geographical coding system.
Data collection
The principal areas of data collection are:
- Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry
- Commerce, Energy and Industry
- Crime and Justice
- Economy
- Education and Training
- Health and Care (Among numerous regular surveys, such as the
General Household Survey,
the Labour Force Survey and the
UK National Census that
takes place every 10 years, ONS runs the England and Wales
Longitudinal Survey, which monitors the health, address changes and
fertility of a 1% sample of the population of England and Wales
over time for statistical purposes).
- Labour Market
- Natural and Built Environment
- Population and Migration
- Public Sector and Other
- Social and Welfare
- Transport, Travel and Tourism
Statisticians are also employed by many other Government
departments and agencies, and these statisticians often collect and
publish data. They are members of the
Government Statistical
Service and are the professional responsibility of the head of
the service, who is also the National Statistician. Each department
has a statistical service
Head of Profession.
For example, data on
Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry comes primarily from the Department for the Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs
. Along with economic data on which the
Treasury and Bank of England rely for decision-making, many of the
statistics that receive widespread media attention are issued by
the Home Office, the
Department of Health,
and the
Department
for Education and Skills. ONS is also responsible for the
maintenance of the
Inter-Departmerntal Business Register
and the
Business Structure Database.
Former departments
Prior to the establishment of the
UK Statistics Authority, the
statistical work of ONS, since June 2000, was scrutinized by the
Statistics Commission, an
independent body with its own chairman and small staff. This ceased
to operate from 1 April 2008. The
General Register Office and the post
of
Registrar-General for England
& Wales ceased to be part of ONS from that date but remains
subject to ministerial accountability within the
Home Office.
The Blue Book
Annually, the Office for National Statistics publish their findings
in the so-called
Blue Book. It contains the estimates of
the domestic and national product, income and expenditure of the
United Kingdom, and is available as hardcopy, as well as a web
version.
Education of Statisticians
The Office
for National Statistics collaborates with the University of
Southampton
in the teaching of a MSc in Official Statistics,
the programme has been in running since 2003.
Office Locations
ONS London office, 1 Drummond
Gate
The ONS
has a head office in the city of Newport
, South
Wales, and other offices in Islington in London
and Titchfield in Hampshire.
The
Family Records
Centre in Myddelton Street in Islington, London, moved to the National Archives in Kew
during the first half of 2008, with the building taken over by
staff vacating the Pimlico site (1 Drummond Gate).
Former Headquarters
The London (Pimlico) office was the head office until April 2006
when the corporate headquarters was moved to Newport following the
Lyons Review on public sector relocation. Initially, the London
office was in three buildings but due to reductions, London staff
are now in Myddelton Street. This London office is expected to
house few staff by April 2010 by which time the ONS policy is for
its statistical activities to be concentrated in Titchfield and
Newport
Gradual move of functions to South Wales
The ONS asserts that recruitment and training of quality staff in
South Wales, where data collection and analysis already takes
place, will ensure that there is no risk to the quality of its
services and that it is managing the risks associated with the
changes which it is implementing in a planned and gradual way.
However the plan to discontinue all remaining statistical activity
in London is proving controversial amid claims that the shift of
functions from London and the impending closure of the London
office could have serious implications for the future of certain
particular sets of statistics. These include health statistics,
National Accounts, Retail and Consumer Prices and Labour Market
Statistics. These risks derive from the fact that few of the
experienced staff working in these highly technical areas are
expected to be willing to relocate to Newport, resulting in a
substantial loss of expertise and a consequent threat to the
continued quality of the statistics. In a submission to the
Parliamentary Treasury Sub Committee, the Bank of England too has
expressed concern over the relocation of the ONS to Newport,
saying, that
"the relocation programme poses serious risks to
the maintenance of the quality of macroeconomic data. If
substantial numbers of ONS staff are unwilling to relocate, the
loss of skilled individuals could have a severe impact on a range
of statistics." The director of ONS has vigorously defended
ONS implementation of government policy on civil service relocation
and the decision to concentrate staff in the three locations
outside London.
Criticism of the ONS
Len Cook, when
National Statistician, described
himself as the country's most abused civil servant. Occasional
errors and revisions accounts for some past criticism while the
allocation of
Private Finance
Initiative expenditure (albeit following
OECD
and international statistical guidelines according to who carries
the risk) has attracted political attention.
Many of the most controversial topics for statistics issued by
government do not come from ONS though they are expected to meet
National Statistics standards. Crime statistics and other
data (e.g. health and education) that could be deemed to assess the
effectiveness of government policies often attract media
scepticism. The compulsory nature of the census (unlike most other
surveys by academics and market researchers) differentiates ONS
from other data collectors (apart from
HM Revenueand Customs). The Office for
National Statistics won the 2004
Big
Brother Award for the "Most Heinous Government Organisation"
from the campaigning organisation
Privacy International for its
Citizen Information Project. The
project is one of several that lead the
Information Commissioner
to warn that there is a danger of the country "sleepwalking" into a
surveillance society. There has
also been criticism of the ONS and of the government for its
pursuit of government policies for modernization and for relocation
to sites outside London. It is not moving to a single site and will
continue to perform most of its functions from the two sites in
Newport and Titchfield while reducing its London operation to one
eventual small location.
See also
References
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