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One of the top government civil servants is tasked with reaching the bottom of data problems produced by the National Statistics Office, as concerns are growing in Westminster on the credibility of the numbers used to manage the UK economy.
Pat McFaden, Cabinet Office Minister, asked his top official cat to review the performance of Ons In the middle of fears that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is left to fly blind while preparing his plans for the economy.
“The road thinks it is an obvious problem,” one minister of the minister said. “He raised it with the Permanent Secretary (little) and said it was crucial that we have data we can rely on.”
Little and her colleagues have been asked to provide options for possible action by the government after a series of discoveries of error in official economic indicators, according to people with knowledge of her briefing. Among the ideas of the table is an independent review, although no decisions have been made.
Last week, Dam Meg Hillier, chairman of the Influential Committee to choose from the Ministry of Finance, wrote to Sir Jan Diamond, a national statistician, to highlight “disturbing mistakes and delays” in some groups of statistics.
One Reeves ally said: “There is frustration that we make economic decisions when data is wrong. It is a bit of a problem, to put it mild.”
Ons is struggling with questions with some of the most famous market -sensitive data, making it difficult for UK policy makers to manage the economy. Concerns focused on the defect of a key labor research that supports job data, but ONS has found problems in other parts of its production.
Cruncher has suspended the announcement of two manufacturer pricing indices that help calculate GDP and has been criticized for “inconvenient economic judgment” by the Fiscal Study Institute in the way it restores pension wealth.
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee emphasized the need for “high quality and reliable official data in the entire spectrum of economic and labor market” after Governor Andrew Bailey amazed Quality of job numbers.
The UK Statistical Office of Statistical Regulations, which oversees the country’s statistical system, plans to release a temporary report in April on a systemic overview of the economic statistics it launched last year.
– The official near McFaden said he was concerned about issues in the UNS. “It is essential that we have reliable data and ons is vital to it,” the source said.
In his letter, Hillier told the statistics chief that he was “concerned about the impact of uncertain statistics on the labor market and whether there are problems with other economic data”.
She added: “The latest disturbing errors and delays in the data on trading data and the data index of manufacturer’s price index will extend concerns about the confidence and accuracy of economic statistics available to policy makers and other users.”
Hillier demanded an update of nature and the reasons for the mistakes set out in the manufacturer’s price numbers, as well as the UN’s response to IFS criticism of wealth numbers.
She also asked for more information on the problems in the trading data, after the ONS on March 13 marked a mistake in the 2023 numbers.
On Friday, Ons announced updates to its trading data after examining that problem. Among the problems were the errors in the data provided by HM revenues and customs related to imports of goods and error in the system processing numbers, the UNS said.
However, Revisions Trade numbers for 2023 and 2024 did not affect broader GDP data.
The cabinet cabinet declined to comment. Ons told FT “remains focused on producing the highest quality of statistics for the public good and is committed to continuously improving our methods and approaches.”
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