Coronavirus: Statistics
(asked on 25th September 2020) - View Source
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what requests for assessment of compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics have been made under section 12(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 in respect of statistics relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have therefore asked the Authority to respond.
Dear Lord Lipsey,
As Head of the Office for Statistics Regulation and Director General for Regulation at the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what requests for assessment of compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics have been made under section 12(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 in respect of statistics relating to the COVID-19 pandemic (HL8482).
?To date, no requests for assessment have been made under section 12(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 relating to COVID-19 statistics[1]. The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) established a short series of rapid reviews to provide timely, independent reassurance and challenge on some key statistics that were developed in response to the pandemic. The outcomes of those 12 reviews are available on the OSR website[2].
Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson
[1]A formal request for assessment made under section 12(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 is just one way for the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to exercise its statutory powers. Re-assessments of existing National Statistics are carried out proactively by OSR under section 14(1) of the Act. In addition, for example, OSR carries out larger-scale reviews of systemic issues, shorter compliance checks and responds to correspondence about official statistics. OSR received three section 12(1) requests for assessment in 2019, and has received two requests to date in 2020, none of which related to COVID-19 statistics.