Welcome move towards more transparent data from DWP

After last week's agreement by two newspapers to amend erroneous stories we had been chasing them about for months, Full Fact is also pleased to report success in another ongoing campaign of ours.

In recent months we have been frequent critics of the practices of the Department for Work Pensions (DWP) when it came to giving stats to the press but not making them available to an inquisitive public.

This culminated in our complaint to the UK Statistics Authority, whose Chairman, Sir Michael Scholar, acknowledged "serious deficiencies" in DWP practice.

Anyone who has been reading the papers in the last few weeks will have noticed that this has not stopped a fairly steady stream of reports about the amount of people not working, or the length of time they have been on certain benefits.

What it has stopped, however, is the practice of only making these figures available to journalists with briefings that are not even published on the Department's website.

The research section of the DWP website now carries an 'ad hoc research' section where the research behind these stories is published, as far as we can tell before the numbers reach the newspapers' pages.

The move is very welcome, not only for the transparency the statistics gain, but as a sign of the Department's willingness to engage with Full Fact's concerns about their practices. 

With the briefings now available emphasis shifts to their content.

Two weeks ago, we raised concerns that one such briefing, showing the number of people who had never worked, only gave figures from 2008 onward despite figures existing on this since 1992.

Again Full Fact complained — this time to DWP directly — on the grounds that quoting two years worth of data from an unpublished set of figures dating back 18 years seemed to run contrary to an important tenet of Sir Michael Scholar's response to Full Fact last month.

Sir Michael argued that there was no problem with selective quotation of figures "provided that they are presented fairly and accurately, and provided that the public has equal access to the database concerned, so that alternative selections may be made."

We have now received a response from the DWP, who argued that the manner of publication did not in their view constitute a breach of the Code of Practice.
Debate will continue about the merits of publishing these 'ad hoc' pieces of research carrying headline grabbing findings, as opposed to regular bulletins of official statistics.

But now the figures are being published, any recurrent issues with the data being published will quickly become apparent.

So let's hope this additional transparency is for life, not just for Christmas.