The BBC reports:
The UK’s statistics watchdog has rebuked a minister over his handling of controversial figures on benefits claimed by immigrants.
Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, questioning the way he released the figures almost week ago.
He highlighted that the figures were presented to the public as if they were official figures but in fact had not been through the rigorous and impartial process for publishing such numbers:
Sir Michael said: “Many users have treated them as official statistics, and have assumed that they should have been published in accordance with the Code of Practice, which would, amongst other things, have prevented government ministers from issuing a political commentary on the statistics ahead of their publication. The Statistics Authority shares that view.
“These statistics are both highly relevant to public policy and highly vulnerable to misinterpretation.
“There are some important caveats and weaknesses that need to be explained carefully and objectively to Parliament and the news media at the time of publication.”…
Sir Michael Scholar now wants the DWP to agree that future figures on benefits and foreign workers should be handled as official statistics so that they can be presented in a factual, politically neutral way.
He also wants the raw data published so that experts outside government can do their own number-crunching.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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4 Comments
IDS has got form.
He has been heavily criticised last year for the way in which the figures on Incapacity benefits/WCA etc were released. The tabloids spun them to suggest that the Govt was exposing widespread benefit scrounging and the DWP did nothing to dispel that impression (indeed it was suggested that DWP were complicit in promoting that view).
This Govt (the Tory part of it at least) has absolutely no respect for evidence and apparently has no conception that evidence differs in quality.
This case follows hard on the heels of Chris Grayling openly criticising the National Audit Office because it had to temerity to report their investigations concluding that his beloved Work Programme wasn’t actually working very well.
Never let the evidence get in the way of good old ideologically-driven policy.
I see it as a good news story that the head of the UK Statistics Authority has the guts to challenge a goverment minister in this way.
I’d always assumed that official government statistics were highly vulnerable to government manipulation. Sir Michael Scholar is to be congratulated. I hope the DWP agree to his request.
No surely this is wrong…
Those johnny foreigners are taking all our money, IDS told us, don’t let the facts get in the way. They’re no better than those scrounging people with disabilities ATOS will fix, or those work shy few million who can’t find work……
Steve Way…
Absolutely right. It’s these same foreigners who are willing to work for minimum wage, take all the jobs whilst, at the same time, are lazy scoungers who recieve massive benefits……er,um…I know it’s true because I read it in the ‘Mail’