Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics (ONS; Welsh: Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament.
Agency overview
1 April 1996
United Kingdom
Government Buildings, Cardiff Road, Newport NP10 8XG
51°34′00″N 03°01′42″W / 51.56667°N 3.02833°W
3,302 (including UK Statistics Authority)
£206.5 million (2009–2010)[1] (including UK Statistics Authority)
Overview[edit]
The ONS is responsible for the collection and publication of statistics related to the economy, population and society of the UK; responsibility for some areas of statistics in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales is devolved to the devolved governments for those areas. The ONS functions as the executive 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,[note 1] 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 a small office is in London. ONS co-ordinates data collection with the respective bodies in Northern Ireland and Scotland, namely NISRA and NRS.
History[edit]
The ONS was formed on 1 April 1996 by the merger of the Central Statistical Office (CSO) and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS).[2] Following the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, the United Kingdom Statistics Authority became a non-ministerial department on 1 April 2008.[3]
Independence[edit]
Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced on 28 November 2005,[4] that the government intended to publish plans in early 2006 to legislate that the ONS and the statistics it generates are independent of government on a model based on the independence of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England.[5] This was originally a 1997 Labour manifesto commitment[6] and was also the policy of the Liberal Democrat[7] and Conservative[8] parties. Such independence was also sought by the Royal Statistical Society[9] and the Statistics Commission.[10]
The National Statistician would be directly accountable to Parliament through a more widely constituted independent governing Statistics Board.[11] 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.[12]
The then National Statistician, Dame Karen Dunnell, stated that legislation would help improve public trust in official statistics[13] (although the ONS already acted independently, as per its own published guidelines, the National Statistics Code of Practice,[14] which set out the key principles and standards that official statisticians, including those in other parts of the government statistical service, were 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.[15] 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, with the intention of re-establishing faith in the integrity of government statistics, was to take on statutory responsibility for oversight of UK statistics in April 2008 and oversee the Office for National Statistics; also having 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.[16] On 7 February 2008, following the first meeting of the shadow board, it was announced that it would be known as the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA).
In 2012, Andrew Dilnot replaced Michael Scholar as chairman of the Authority.
Heads of the Office and the National Statistician[edit]
Since its establishment, ONS has had five Directors: professor Tim Holt; Len Cook; Karen Dunnell; Jil Matheson; and, from October 2012, Glen Watson. Len Cook was the first Director to hold the newly created role of National Statistician. The roles of Director of ONS and National Statistician were combined until 2012 when Jil Matheson continued as National Statistician while Glen Watson became Director of the ONS. John Pullinger replaced Jil Matheson as National Statistician (and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority) in July 2014. Pullinger retired in June 2019 and in October 2019 professor Sir Ian Diamond assumed the role of National Statistician.
Criticism of the ONS[edit]
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.[33] The project is one of several that led the Information Commissioner to warn that there is a danger of the country "sleepwalking" into a surveillance society.[34]
In December 2012 the organisation's new website to provide statistics to the public was described as "a disaster" by members of parliament on the Public Administration Committee.[35] The chair of the UK Statistics Authority said that significant improvements to the website were being made, but admitted that its state at the time made it "difficult to use, difficult to navigate and difficult to search".[36]
In 2016, professor Sir Charles Bean conducted an independent review of UK Economic Statistics. He notes that although there is much criticism of the ONS's performance, particularly of the size and frequency of revisions, that this criticism is "not entirely justified".[37] Following the review, the then-Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, criticised the ONS for being "out of touch".[38]
In 2019, the ONS admitted that EU migration to the UK may have been underestimated due to methodology of the International Passenger Survey. [39]