Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his Department's policies of the Office for Statistics Regulation's publication entitled OSR’s statement on the Labour Force Survey-derived estimates and Annual Population Survey-derived estimates, published on 12 December 2024.

The Department uses the data and outputs from both the Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey to feed into some of our own statistical products. We recognise the importance of these surveys, and whilst it is disappointing that the accredited official statistics status has been removed from these two surveys, we understand these products continue to follow statistical best practice where possible.

The reduced sample size in the Annual Population Survey means there may be more uncertainty around some of our estimates at a local authority level, and there may be a gap in some of our data at local authority level in the short term. We will continue to work with the Office for National Statistics to ensure that any implications for our own evidence is clearly understood and explained to our users, in line with the Statistics Code of Practice.