Ministers should not use unpublished data, says watchdog

The Statistics Authority has today made clear that when ministers make statements using official figures they have been provided with, these must have been published.

"…where a Minister relies on information provided in this way, the underlying data should be published at the same time".

In the past ministers have sometimes quoted statistics without there being public access to the data, and accompanying caveats, that they were based on.

This ruling makes clear that this is prohibited.

It comes after Health Minister Dan Poulter used accurate but unpublished statistics on the number of A&E doctors earlier this month. We challenged this as a breach of the Code of Practice.

The Code says that, to ensure their impartiality and objectivity, official statistics must be equally available to all. The body responsible for the statistics, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), disputed that there had been a breach as the figures were available on request.

But in practice such requests take time and this leaves scope for doubt about the independence of the final product. Ministers will benefit from being able to use official statistics whose provenance is clearly in the public domain.

We're grateful to the HSCIC and UK Statistics Authority for engaging with us and clarifying the rules.