Call to strip ministers of sneak preview of statistics

Published on Friday 2 January 2009 23:12

MINISTERS and their political advisers should be stripped of their privileged access to see official statistics before they are formally published, a Whitehall watchdog said yesterday.

Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, said public confidence in official figures was being eroded by selective leaking of data to support the government's political position.

He said he wanted Britain to move to a system where ministers only received the information when it was made generally available.

"What we ought to do is move to a system in which everybody gets the figures at the same time," he said.

"That is when the politics should start. It shouldn't start while the numbers are being produced."

Last month, Sir Michael publicly rebuked the Home Office for the "premature" release of knife-crime statistics which had not been properly validated, prompting an apology to parliament by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. Sir Michael said that such incidents undermined public confidence in official data.

"It is centrally related to the trust agenda. People don't trust official statistics, they think politicians and political advisers have been able to get at them," he said.

"There have been instances – there have been some in recent months – in which ministers and their political advisers who have the figures in advance of the general public and parliament have then leaked them, have put them out selectively, to help them in a political argument which they are advancing."