By David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s Office for National Statistics must take urgent steps within the next four weeks to reverse a fall in the quality of key economic statistics including those for unemployment, a regulator said on Monday.
The ONS has faced criticism from the Bank of England and many economists for its failure to reverse a post-pandemic slump in the number of participants in its flagship survey of Britain’s labour market as well as other issues.
The public agency that monitors the quality of Britain’s official data, the Office for Statistics Regulation, launched a review in July 2024 into problems at the ONS and last week the government announced a separate probe.
“It is critical that ONS takes decisive action to restore confidence,” the OSR said.
Statistics agencies in other countries did not have the same amount of problems, suggesting the ONS had an “urgent need to modernise its (data) collection approach and working practices”.
The regulator told the ONS to publish a fully resourced plan to improve its surveys within four weeks and that within three months it should spell out how it would prioritise funding for economic statistics and check their quality more regularly.
“Insufficient investment” in collecting data had been a key issue, the regulator added.
In response, the ONS said its latest business plan included a renewed focus on core economic and population data.
“We recognise and share concerns about data quality and are addressing these as a matter of urgency,” a spokesperson said.
Last year the ONS said it did not expect to complete improvements to the labour force data until 2027.
The OSR said discussions with ONS staff and users of its data suggested some concerns about how its executives allocated resources and engaged with outsiders.
“ONS staff told us that, despite some encouragement from senior managers, early warning of emerging problems has not always been welcomed,” the regulator added.
(Reporting by David MillikenEditing by William Schomberg and Suban Abdulla)
