20 October 2006
Where there are targets, there must be statistics. Where there are statistics, there must be politics, and where there is politics, there must be public distrust. The ONS must try to find a way out of this impasse
The Office for National Statistics is a key building block in the British political system. A democracy relies heavily on data and information to assess the impact of governments and other official institutions. This is probably more true in Britain than in many other countries because of its number of performance indicators, targets and efficiency reviews.
The ONS is the guardian of the numbers by which government is judged a success or a failure. Unemployment, hospital waiting lists, GCSE performance and inflation are just four of the leading indicators that have dominated political discourse over the past 20 or so years. Each month or year, official statistics tell us whether the government is delivering or not.
The problem that has faced the ONS and other providers of official data is that they operate in a highly charged political environment where government and Opposition will use statistics to 'prove' whatever they want. The greater the political salience of an indicator, the greater the pressure that will bear down on it.
There was a reminder of this problem recently when the ONS initiated its latest attempt to find a way of measuring productivity in the public services. The ONS's UK Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity published a document seeking views on the principles that should underpin the measurement of public service outputs and productivity. There will now be a national search for evidence on the subject.
The centre's work is a follow-on from Sir Tony Atkinson's review of government output and productivity. Atkinson was asked to undertake his work after Health Secretary John Reid had, in 2004, criticised the ONS's previous measurement of productivity as 'absurd'. In the light of aggressive ministerial criticism and pressure over an issue at the heart of the judgement of the government's efficiency and effectiveness, a long-term inquiry into the measurement of government productivity has been evolved.
As far as the government is concerned, life is now much easier than before. There is no agreed way of measuring productivity in the public services, so it is not possible for the Opposition to adjudge health or education to have been anything other than good value for money.
However, there is a more serious issue at stake here. The government's response to the ONS's productivity measures was sharp and negative because there was so much political capital at stake. If there had been the slightest suggestion that higher NHS or education expenditure was associated with declining value for money, the Opposition would have had a field day. Through no fault of its own, the ONS found itself in a political war zone.
Worse, there have been plenty of other wars of this kind in target-obsessed Britain. The measurement of unemployment — and countless revisions to it — during the Thatcher years remains a testament to the way in which official statistics can be put under unacceptable pressure from the political system. Something similar has happened to inflation measures under various governments. The dear old retail price index now has a number of cousins, each created at a time when the government of the day wanted to make a particular political point about the cost of living. Generally, they were looking for a measure below the RPI.
The 'devaluation' of GCSEs and A-levels is another issue, though not one that falls within the ONS's scope to control. As ever more students have achieved high grades, critics claim examinations have become easier. In truth, no one really knows. But, once again, the political importance of schools' performance has ensured that overall examination performance by schools has become almost impossible to assess.
Crime statistics probably represent the worst example of politically damaged official information. After years during which politicians have selectively used reported crime figures to provide them with comfort, no one knows what the statistics really show. Even the survey-based British crime survey is widely criticised. Criminologists are now cautious about answering whether they think crime is going up or down in Britain. Migration is fast becoming a problem for similar reasons.
The (relatively) new national statistician is Karen Dunnell. She has inherited the ONS at a time when the government is committed to making it more independent. Dunnell herself has chastised no less than the prime minister for releasing official statistics early. There are encouraging signs that she is starting to rebuild perceptions of independence in national statistics. Recent surveys by the ONS itself have, depressingly, suggested that the public believes that there is political interference in the production of official figures.
For the sake of democracy and good government, we must hope that the ONS and other producers of official statistics can rebuild public trust. Genuine independence should be an absolute priority. Dunnell deserves all our support.
Tony Travers is the director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics
PFoct2006
