Work from home to blame for ONS's unreliable data

Telegraph

6 hours ago

Staff working from home at Britain's official statistics agency is damaging the quality of UK economic data, a scathing independent review has found.
Sir Robert Devereux, a former top civil servant who was appointed to assess the state of the crisis-stricken Office for National Statistics (ONS), found the arrangements were jeopardising the ability of ONS to fulfil its core function of collecting and analysing statistics.
On Thursday, his report found the staff at the agency were still resisting returning to the office full time.
ONS staff can currently spend five days a week working at home. Unions representing some ONS staff have threatened to strike over demands that workers attend the office on at least two days per week.
The unions have said there has been no tangible impact on the ONS's outputs because of the work arrangements.
But Sir Robert said in his review: 'The return to working in the office, post pandemic, was not handled well and one of the unions is still operating 'action short of a strike'.
'This needs to be resolved quickly: some recognition of the past poor handling is necessary; but so too is a wider recognition of the benefits of teams spending time together in one place.'
While the union work from home dispute has continued, vital information on the state of the jobs market and on inflation in the economy has become less reliable, making it harder for the Bank of England to set interest rates.
Figures on unemployment and on the number of people who are economically inactive are considered unreliable, as the ONS struggles to convince households to respond to its surveys.
Earlier this month officials revealed a mistake in April's consumer price inflation data, caused by an error in information submitted by the Department for Transport, while the producer price index, which covers inflation faced by businesses, has not been published since February.
Under Andrew Bailey, the Bank's Governor, policymakers have resorted to using more of their own surveys and private sector data to assess the state of the economy.
Sir Robert said that senior bosses at the ONS poured resources into new methods of analysing the economy - without budgeting sufficiently for other tasks.
'Unfortunately, this has had the (unintended) effect of de-prioritising the less exciting, but nonetheless crucial, task of delivering core economic statistics of sufficient quality to guide decision making,' he said.
He criticised the 'inadequacies in the way ONS has made decisions, planned and budgeted, and managed risks' and 'a reluctance, at senior levels, to hear and act on difficult news'.
The former civil servant also said the agency is a relatively unattractive place for highly qualified statisticians to work.
'The organisation's office locations, mostly outside major cities, and with analyst pay not comparable with other departments, makes it difficult to recruit and retain the necessary skilled staff,' he said.
When the ONS moved a large share of its staff from London to Newport after a review in 2004, as many as 90pc of workers left the organisation instead of relocating to Wales.
Grant Fitzner, the ONS's acting director general for economic statistics, promised 'a shift in the culture of our organisation, to embrace critical views, encourage greater curiosity, heed early warning signals and be open about the challenges we face'.
This will include refocusing resources on economic statistics, he said, including offering more digital surveys and 'putting more resources into knocking on doors to further boost responses'.