Full Fact has, for some weeks now, raised concerns about press releases from the Department for Work and Pensions containing seemingly unpublished statistics.

We revealed that some of the recent stories were based on ‘ad hoc’, unpublished figures circulated to the press from the database used to produce the official statistical releases on welfare.

Beyond the problems concerned with accessing the data to evaluate whether the claims made by the Department are valid, it is worth looking at some of the guidance relating to official statistics.

Back in 2009, following the furore over the controversial release of knife crime statistics by the then Government, Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell issued a clarification on the code for official statistics to all Whitehall departments.

The guidance stated:

“When preparing any publication containing statistics, including those drawn from administrative or management information, you must involve statistical professionals at the earliest opportunity
·        You must not use unpublished statistics without the advice of a statistical professional
·        You must not selectively quote favourable data from any unpublished dataset
·        Decisions taken by statistical professionals are final
·        Any publication containing official statistics must provide information relating to their quality, reliability and usability
·        Pre-release access to official statistics is a privilege. You must not disclose any information, nor seek to alter it in any way
·        Ignoring the above may constitute a breach of the code and result in an investigation by the UK Statistics Authority and a published report to Parliament.”

There are a couple of points which seem of relevance to the manner in which DWP have been releasing these statistics, particularly those governing the quoting of unpublished statistics.

The importance of these matters is highlighted by a letter written by the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, to David Cameron back in May.

Sir Michael told the new Prime Minister: “The Cabinet Secretary’s existing guidance on statistical practice requires all officials and advisors, not only government statisticians, to observe the Code of Practice for Official Statistics; to consult professional statisticians when preparing publications; not to quote selectively from unpublished datasets; and to raise any concerns with their departmental Head of Profession, or the National Statistician.”

On Monday a departmental spokesman confirmed to Full Fact that the specific figures quoted in one press release were not in any breakdown of the figures on the DWP website.

In light of this Full Fact will be writing to the UK Statistics Authority for clarification as to whether the unpublished figures sent to the press conformed with the guidance quoted above.

UPDATE: To see our letter to the Statistics Authority and their reponse click here.