In this episode, we focus on a powerful example of when the numbers alone are simply not enough. The most recent Census has told us how many people have some form of disability but to really understand the nature of those disabilities and the needs of people reporting them we need to do a lot more work.   Guiding us through this work, is Helen Colvin, joint lead for Census and Disability Analysis at the ONS; Shona Horter, Head of Qualitative Research at the ONS Centre for Equalities and Inclusion; David Ainslie, Principal Analyst in the Analytical Hub of ONS and Matt Mayhew, Senior Statistical Officer in the Policy Evidence and Analysis Team.    Transcript  MILES FLETCHER  Hello and welcome again to another edition of Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics podcast.   In this series, we've spent a lot of time explaining how statistics can brilliantly illuminate important issues, and this time we're focusing on a powerful example of when the numbers alone are simply not enough.   The most recent census has told us how many people have some form of disability and where they live. It's a good place to start of course, but to really understand the nature of those disabilities, and the needs of the people reporting them, we need to do a lot more work and that work is the subject of today's discussion.   Here to guide us through it we have Helen Colvin, joint lead for Census disability analysis at the ONS; Shona Horter, head of qualitative research at the ONS Centre for equalities and inclusion; David Ainslie, Principal Analyst at the analytical hub of ONS; and Matt Mayhew, senior statistical officer in the policy evidence and analysis team.   Helen to start with you, I mentioned the census there and those numbers showing us the scale of disability as defined by Census. Is it fair to say that census remains the sort of statistical bedrock of our understanding of disability - the single most important source?    HELEN COLVIN  Yes that’s right. I'd agree with that. So it's the main source that covers the whole of our population. So it's the best truth that you have, if you like, of what our population is like, and the proportion of disabled people within our population.   MF  And these were people, responding in their households, to the question which said what precisely?   HC  It said: Do you have any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more? And if people answered yes to that, they were asked: Do any of your conditions or illnesses reduce your ability to carry out day to day activities? A lot, a little, or not at all.   MF  What did you have to answer to that to be classified as disabled?   HC  To be classified as disabled - If you answered that you had a long term condition which affects your day to day activities a lot or a little then we regarded that as somebody as disabled. And the reason for that is that at ONS we measure disability against the Equality Act definition of disability and that really identifies somebody as disabled if they have a long term condition, and if it limits their day to day activities. And we do that so that we're able to report against the progress on the Equality Act in the UK.   MF  And the key element it would seem that - obviously we're talking about disability - is your ability to do day to day tasks and a sustained limitation.   HC  That's right, that needs to be... to be disabled under the Equality Act there needs to be a long term thing which affects you for up to 12 months or more. And it needs to be something which does impact you on your ability to carry out day to day activities. And that's really something that is arguably focusing on the medical model of disability, so focuses on how you can't do things because of your impairment because of the environment around you.   MF  Now that question is slightly different from the one asked in 2011. Why was that changed?   HC  So in 2011, we asked a very similar question, but we did remove a prompt which asked people to include problems specifically related to old age and this really was about bringing it more in line with the Equality Act, which doesn't have that emphasis. Problems related to older ages still classified as disability, but it wasn't making it the same kind of focus of the question, and another part that we changed was to remove the word disability because of course, disabled means different things to different people. And we tried to measure it slightly more objectively by using our own definition rather than asking about people's own opinions if they were disabled. And this time we also included mental health within the question, and we think that that could have influenced the raises that we saw among younger people.    MF  But how big an influence do we think that?   HC  So in census 2021, we did see an increase among younger people being classified as disabled compared to 2011. And this did stand out particularly for females slightly more than males. We think there was also possibly a real change in population at that time down to the pandemic, with more people showing signs around depression and mental health problems, particularly at the period that the census was conducted.   MF  And there remains of course, underlying all this. This is census data. This is people's own assessment of their ability. How is that benchmarked perhaps against other sources?   HC  So it's obviously a different measure from other sources. Other data might be more medically based, so GP records, that kind of thing, which is more based on actual conditions as opposed to disability.   MF  And do we think that some people perhaps consider themselves disabled who might not be defined as disabled under other circumstances?   HC  Absolutely. I think disability means different things to different people and some people who might be regarded as disabled under the Equality Act specifically wouldn't want themselves to be looked at that way. And conversely, some people which may not be captured by that definition, may want themselves to be, so there are many different ways you can conceptualise and define disability. So this is one way to try and do that and to measure disability in a slightly more objective way.   MF  And being defined as disabled within that census definition that you've set out for us, how does that match against other criteria of disability, perhaps when it comes to gaining access to benefits or services?   HC  So it has a different definition and a different way of being assessed. So for instance, if somebody wanted to access benefits, then there's a completely different threshold and set of criteria that they would need to meet through Work and Pensions.   MF  There's a tension there isn’t there, perhaps between people who answered in the affirmative on this on the Census but then wouldn't qualify as a disabled in the eyes of officialdom for want of a better word.   HC  Possibly, but we don't have that data within the ONS or around the DWP benefits data for this kind of use, to look at the match between our definition and the DWP assessment criteria.   MF  So you’ve shown us a complex picture there, tell us about the harmonisation work that's been going on across ONS to really develop and refine our understanding of disability as a concept.   HC  Yeah, so there's an ongoing programme of work, taking place to review the current harmonised standards and update them so that they can be more aligned with current conceptualization of disability impairments and conditions and try and ensure that they really relate to and reflect people's experiences. There's been a programme of research and engagement to find out the ways in which the standards are not currently performing, and what some of the key issues and gaps are, and that's due to be published in the end of March. And then the next step will be to outline in detail the plan over the coming year. So so far, the engagement activities have included speaking to data users, a variety of different organisations, government departments, charities, really including everyone across the spectrum, who are people who would use and engage with those harmonised standards to understand a bit more about the needs. And like I said, the kind of priorities and gaps and then the next step will be undertaking research to think about how best can we change and update those standards so that they, like I said, are really reflective and current. And one thing in particular that needs to be looked at being included is adding neurodiversity as a potential category. So at the moment that's not currently listed within the impairment categories. And so feedback has been that many people who are neurodiverse don't identify with the current kind of categorization and wording that's used. So that will be really important going forward.   MF  And that’s also an important reflection of the constantly changing perception of what disability is in society. And from that the challenge of assessing and measuring it, Helen on the Census we've recently published our results as we've already mentioned in this discussion, but would you like to unpack those for us? We know that the number of disabled people went up since 2011.   HC  Yes, that's right. So the number of disabled people went up, but the actual overall proportion of disabled people fell in the population. And it's important to state that we standardise this data. And that's a statistical method which enables us to, to kind of compare like with like, so it accounts for the different population age structure between 2011 and 2021. So in 2021, we saw a slight fall in the proportion of disabled people in the population. So it's currently 18% in England falling from 19% in 2011. And in Wales, it's now 21% falling from 23% in 2011.   MF  And what were the drivers of that? That's a fascinating find.    HC  That’s right. So some people might be slightly surprised by that, but it is a small decrease which we might expect to find in a population where people are living longer and healthier life expectancy is improving. And there may have been other influences such as the pandemic. So asking people how they feel about their health and disability during the pandemic may have affected how they responded as well.   MF  But how does the data break down by region, and by age and by gender?   HC  Say for gender, we saw that females were more likely to be disabled than males. And we had a particularly interesting finding around older people. So there was a big decrease among older people who've been disabled in 2021 Compared to 2011. And that was particularly true among those who were limited a lot by their disability. Obviously, we've talked about the question change where we removed a prompt, which then include problems related to old age, so that may have reduced the number of older people thinking of their conditions as a part of a disability. But we did see that that data was the same for the health question which preceded it as well. So we do think it's a real change in the population. And another aspect of that may have been due to Coronavirus. So we did very sadly see a lot of deaths among disabled people during COVID. But that wouldn't fully account for the changes that we've seen. So we think there's also an improvement in health of older people more generally as well.   MF  Oh, that's a reflection of the healthy life expectancy that we've discussed in other podcasts already, perhaps over and above the COVID factor that you mentioned.   HC  Yes, that's right.   MF  A greater prevalence of disability among younger people, and that was very much reflected, perhaps unsurprisingly, in deprived areas.   HC  Yes, that's right. So the change that we saw for younger people, again was stronger for females than for males. It was true for both genders, but females saw slightly higher proportions of disability than males. And that had increased particularly in the 20 to 24 age group, and the surrounding age groups to that, and that corresponds with some another analysis we've done where we found higher proportions of people with mental health problems, such as depression in those age groups. And we have the same outcome for health in general as well, where there is a correlation between that age group showing poorer health and more disability.   MF  So overall, is disability remaining fairly static from census to census?   HC  That's right. Well, we have seen the numbers of people have increased but the proportion as a population has stayed reasonably static. There are small falls, which does tally with the kind of improvements in health, but overall, it is showing the sorts of trends that we would expect, but we do see one in five people in the population as disabled, which is quite stark and does make us remember that we really need to think about how to improve the inequalities for this population. You mentioned just now about deprivation and deprivation among younger people, and that was an interesting finding we've had from the census data as well. It's not really a surprise to see that in deprived areas more people are likely to be disabled. But what we also found is that that occurs for younger age groups. So younger people in deprived areas are more likely to be disabled across all of the age groups than non-disabled people.   MF  That's the strength of the census of course, that you can get that really, really local picture of where disabled people are, as well as their overall numbers.   HC  Yes, and the index of Multiple Deprivation enables us to understand those areas that are more deprived or less deprived, so that we can look at those at a more aggregate level as well.   MF  Helen, thank you for taking us through the insight, fascinating insight, produced by the Census. But Shona, there is much more to the ONS’ work on understanding disability. Could you set out some of that for us?   SHONA HORTER  Yeah, of course. And I can start by just giving some brief background, there was an independent group of experts who were convened, following the request of the national Statistician in 2020, to look at the inclusivity of data and evidence across the UK more broadly, and to make recommendations as to how we can make a step-change to really ensure that everyone counts and is counted within data and evidence and that programme of work identified disability as one key area that we really need to ensure that questions and concepts are accurately reflecting the experiences of individuals. They also identified the need for more qualitative approaches as part of this. So, we need that alongside our quantitative data. We also need to be really speaking to people and understanding their lived experiences   MF  Because statistics and numbers, and to really understand people's experience of disability, we need to hear from them directly.   SH  Exactly, exactly. And the qualitative can also help us to understand the how and the why beyond the numbers, so we can understand more about the lived reality of people's experiences, the barriers that people face in daily life and people's views as to what could help to improve things going forward. But also, we can understand where we might see patterns in the data, we can actually look at what is the social context beyond what's happening on the ground that might be shaping those experiences. So it's a really, really important thing that we include alongside our statistics.   MF  So what sort of patterns have we been seeing from the data? Helen?   HC  Similar in ONS we collect quite a range of data that encapsulates different disabled people across some of the different data sources that we collect. So, one of the main surveys that we do is the annual population survey which captures people across the UK. Every year we collect data from about 320,000 people. And the picture that we're having from that data is, unfortunately that disabled people tend to fare less well across the things that we measure, say for instance, they're less likely to be happy, they're less likely to see their life as worthwhile, life satisfaction is poor and they're likely to be more anxious than non-disabled people. And we've also seen from other surveys, like the Community in Life Survey that shows that disabled people are more likely to feel lonely. So these are all not positive outcomes. But some of the more positive ones that we have seen around education data, for instance, is showing that the proportion of disabled people with a degree has been steadily climbing since 2014. And the proportion of those who have no education has been steadily falling. It's not as in-line with non-disabled people. So disabled people are still less likely to have degrees than their non-disabled counterparts, but it's still a positive trend that we do see, but that does unfortunately, then feed into things like employment data, which we'll talk about more shortly, but with disabled people less likely to be employed. They're also less likely to own their own homes and more likely to live in social housing. And when we look at the Crime Survey for England and Wales, we also see that disabled people are more likely to experience things like antisocial behaviour and problems with nuisance neighbours than non-disabled people. So it's unfortunately not a positive picture when we look at the data more generally for disabled people.   MF  Nonetheless, that statistical picture fleshes out quite considerably the understanding we get from the census.   So far, we've discussed a variety of different insights on the outcomes for disabled people, but we haven't looked at their experience in the workforce and how being disabled can come with additional costs. David, what are our data telling us about that experience in the workplace and the restrictions as well as the opportunities?    DAVID AINSLIE  So data from the Labour Force Survey shows in the last three months of 2020 to the latest data, and considering just working age adults, about half of disabled adults are in employment, so that's around 5 million disabled adults. So, this compares with about 8 in 10 when you consider non-disabled adults, the gap and rate between these two groups has decreased slightly over the last decade. In 2013, the earliest comparison we can make is that 4 in 10 disabled adults are employed compared with around three quarters of non-disabled adults. Some analysis from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests there's a range of factors that contribute to why this gap has decreased only slightly in the last decade, the largest factor probably being the overall disability prevalence itself has increased over the last decade. This tends to suggest that more people in work are becoming disabled than necessarily disabled people becoming employed. And there are other factors too, like overall changes in the size of the working population and general employment trends over the period.   MF  So this is more a question really, of people being able to hang on to their jobs despite having a limiting condition?   DA  So yes, to an extent, there are some quite stark findings in analysis of longitudinal data from the Labour Force Survey, and this has suggested that disabled workers tend to move out of being employed over an annual period at around twice the rate of non-disabled workers, to about 9% compared to 5%. By contrast, disabled people not in employment tend to move into being employed over a 12 month period at around a third of the rate of non-disabled people. So, 10% versus 27% here.   MF  So what's the evidence of the ability to work from home as encouraging more disabled people into the workforce?   DA  So the general trend of a slightly closing employment gap has actually stalled a bit since the start of the COVID pandemic. More research is definitely needed here to see what the impact of the pandemic has been as well as to look at if there's an impact of an increased ability to work from home. It's worth noting that the pattern of occupations that disabled people and non-disabled people tend to work in look a little different. So in the latest data, data again from the Labour Force Survey, working disabled people were less likely to be working in things like management in professional occupations than non-disabled people, but more likely than non-disabled people to be in occupations that might have been shut down during the pandemic or those where you might have had to work closely with people. So occupations such as in caring and leisure, or in sales and customer service, type occupations. This will of course have had some impact on people's ability to work from home. Lastly on this, of people who are in work at the moment, the latest data from our opinions and lifestyle survey, show it's actually a fairly similar proportion of disabled and non -disabled adults report working from home, hybrid working or indeed travelling to work.   MF  So not a fantastic picture perhaps for those with lifetime limiting conditions. But what did the data tell us about pay between disabled and non-disabled people Matt, what is the earnings gap?   MATT MAYHEW  So there's a similar sort of negative picture here as well. So the latest data we have on the annual population survey from 2021, showed that disabled employees on average were paid around 14% less than non-disabled employees. The gap appears to have widened slightly since 2014, whereas this was about 12%. If you tally this in pounds and pence terms using the latest data, the average pay was around £12.10 pence per hour with disabled adults, compared to about £14.03 per hour for non-disabled adults.   MF  And David, what evidence do we have about how different types of disability affects your chances of being in work and earning money?   DAVID AINSLIE  So the definition of disability of course covers a wide range of people impacted by a whole variety of physical and mental health conditions and to different extents. So the averages we've described cover a really broad group. But we've explored the Labour Force Survey data further, we've looked at both employment rates and pay by a variety of factors that are important to these things, such as the severity of disability, the number of and types of health conditions people report having, as well as some other things. But for example, in the latest data, the lowest employment rates were seen among those who reported they had severe or specific learning difficulties, autism or any mental health conditions with employment rates around about 25 to 30%. At the other end of the scale, disabled adults whose impairments were due to hearing, or skin conditions or allergies, had the highest employment rates, around 60 to 70%.   MF  And is this a similar picture with pay, Matt?   MATT MAYHEW  So when we look at pay, there's a similar sort of variation. So the largest pay gap is for disabled boys reporting autism as their main health condition, who have been paid an average of about a third less than non -disabled employees without any health conditions. Whereas the next largest pay gap is with those with depression with 18% less. By contrast, on the other side of the scale, for those reporting difficulties with seeing, there was actually no pay gap observed between the two groups. And in fact, we observed for those difficulties in hearing, were on average paid about 5% more than non-disabled employees. Severity of impairment is important too. So the pay gap between disabled people who are limited a lot in their day-to-day activities and non-disabled adults is about 20%, whereas those where their condition limits them a little, about 12%.   Lastly, it's important to remember that when considering both pay and employment, that disabled and non-disabled people have patterns of other characteristics creating difference between them, such as age, sex, where they live, and the type of occupations they have, and they are quite often quite different. To look at this on the pay side we have modelled what the differences between the average pay of a disabled and non-disabled employee might look like, if the two groups have the same patterns or personal characteristics, similar ages, same sex distributions and job characteristics such as doing the same jobs, to see what effect that has. When we do this, the differences in the average pay between disabled and non-disabled employees are narrower but still persist between the two groups.   MILES FLETCHER  Shona, it's all very well to talk about a superimposed definition of disability, statistics tend to bring two issues, but our qualitative work has actually thrown up some fresh insights on what sort of characteristics make up disability?   SHONA HORTER  Yeah, and we've undertaken two quite large qualitative studies over the last year. One looking at the experiences of disabled adults accessing and engaging with activities, goods and services in the private sector and the other looking at the educational experiences of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. And through both those studies, we found a really a huge variation in people's experiences of disability or impairment. Many people have invisible impairments or conditions. People can have multiple impairments and comorbidities that can interact. So for example, physical conditions can be accompanied by mental health difficulties. And there can be a cyclical relationship that people describe as being catch-22. If you're struggling with your physical health, and that can exacerbate mental health, which can then cycle back into other challenges. So it's really important to understand that variety of experience and also how that can link to individuals' identity. So that can be a real process of adjusting to a diagnosis or to living with an impairment or condition and that can require adjusting one's own identity. And can also be different if you've recently acquired a condition or if you've had it for your whole life. And that's also linked to the social, so a lot of people spoke about anticipating judgement of others, being seen as different and the vulnerability that can come with that, and the anticipated stigma. So there are lots of reasons why people won't necessarily identify as disabled, or reasons why people may not identify with a specific condition, illness or impairment. And some young people also talked about diagnostic labels that they saw themselves as having such as dyslexia or autism. ADHD, that could help to explain their learning and support needs. But actually, many really didn't want to have labels that were used to justify any kind of different treatment, different opportunities and some rejected the label altogether. So it's really just understanding that nuance and the multifaceted nature of people's experiences and identity around this.   MF  And you made an interesting point there about disability that perhaps is invisible to others, unlike some forms of disability, which then people benefit from a recognition of that, but then others perhaps suffer from not having the disability recognised.   SH  Yeah, and that can be really complex. So we're working on a paper on that very topic at the moment that we're planning to publish soon, that actually that's another layer of, on the one hand, people describe being able to potentially hide having a condition or impairment that means that you might be able to avoid anticipated stigma, or discrimination or kind of negative reaction of the public but also, often people describe needing to disclose their condition or impairment in order to access the support that means they would be able to then access and engage with different areas of life so there can be quite a lot of vulnerability around that and that can also intersect with other characteristics. So people described the additional layers of vulnerability linked to gender linked to ethnicity that can form multiple, multiple layers of discrimination.   MF  And thereby we get to a much more useful understanding of, say a wider pattern of disadvantage generally.   SH  Yeah, and also really the need to understand me, what came through so clearly in both of these studies was the need to be flexible and to listen to and understand people's different needs.   MF  So this qualitative work is providing a much richer understanding of a wider pattern of disadvantage of which disability is but one factor.   SH  Yeah, and I think it really, these studies have both really highlighted the importance of having flexibility in listening to and understanding people's different needs. What we saw from both young people's perspectives and the perspectives of adults was really that just having that need for additional support. That means that you can fully and meaningfully participate in education and daily life in a range of different activities, goods and services. One of the particular difficulties I think, around invisible impairments that the findings presented was what people described as a need to prove their worthiness or prove their legitimacy of access to additional support needs. And that could bring an additional challenge, and also an additional level of stigma and vulnerability, that many people described facing backlash when, for example, having a lanyard or a badge that indicated the need for additional support. That there's that “disbelieveability” around that as well. So I think it was really emphasised through all our studies how important it is that there's increased awareness about people's different experiences and needs and that there's increased understanding and support for that put in place.    MF  And so the knowledge base continues to grow. The time of recording this, we're beginning to be able to step back and look at the pandemic period. What do we understand of that at the moment, in terms of its impact on disabled people at the time of the pandemic, and perhaps some of the lasting impacts and effects of it?   SH  Yeah, and I can comment briefly on the qualitative research there and Helen, it would be good to hear more about the quantitative findings on this. We found a really mixed picture in terms of experiences through the pandemic. So in some ways, the increased move to online services, groups, and education classes really opened up the world for people and could facilitate and support access and engagement and also could really support social contact. So many people described being able to join groups and networks that they hadn't previously been able to do as a result of, for example, physical access barriers. So that was really, really positive. But on the other hand, there was a real disadvantage for those who are digitally excluded. And we know that disabled people are disproportionately digitally excluded. Also in other ways the pandemic contributed to increased fear, increased isolation, so people talked about having increased social contact online, but that didn't necessarily replace the real in person activities and social contact. Some also found it quite difficult to engage and focus with online format. So particularly describing the cognitive demands that could be difficult for those with memory and learning, understanding or concentration impairments in particular, and real difficulties in accessing the required support. So SEN support was said to be quite slow to return to schools, and some children and young people with physical needs couldn't return to school safely without that support. So there was a kind of lasting impact there as well.   MF  And what's the future of the qualitative side of this work as well? Will that continue alongside the regular sources of overarching data?   SH  Yeah, I think it's important to continue to think about where we have gaps in our evidence and understanding and where there are questions that we can address qualitatively. And also considering having more mixed methods approaches. So where we can consider including qualitative components alongside our statistics to better understand some of these particular questions in more detail. So for example, one of the qualitative studies I've just mentioned was around the additional cost of disability. So, many people spoke about the additional financial costs like added premiums for insurance or for medical equipment compared to similar equipment that might be purchased by somebody who's not disabled, and we know that that's likely to become evermore difficult with the cost of living crisis. So whether that's an area that could warrant further exploration, I think it's just continuing to think about what are the key questions, evidence gaps and the needs for us to be addressing to ensure that we can inform policy and practice and make sure that our data is speaking to people's experiences and needs.  MF  Thank you, Shona. Helen, is there anything you'd like to add on that?   HELEN COLVIN  Yeah, absolutely. I think the work that Sona’s team have been doing around qualitative research with disabled people is so valuable for helping to really illustrate the findings that we tend to get from the aggregated data that ONS has been more traditionally producing this. So where during the pandemic those qualitative interviews really showed and highlighted the day to day situations that disabled people were living with, because alongside that we also ran a survey on the opinion survey about disabled people's access to products and services and the data that we had from that very much supported the sort of experiences that people were reporting to Shona. So we found that disabled people had more difficulty accessing products and services during the pandemic than non- disabled people, and much of that appeared to be down to difficulties using transport, having places to rest and with practical things like crossing the roads, crossing footpaths, and moving around buildings, which were evident in some of the sort of lived experience quotes that Shona’s team were picking up on as well.   MF  How to statisticians go about the whole question though of deciding whether it is disabilities that’s the driver here, or whether there are other factors that ought to be considered first?  HC  Yeah, good question. So we know that in a lot of the outcomes that we look at disabled people tend to fare worse than non-disabled people. This isn't likely to be down to just being disabled per se. We think it's more likely that no single factor is going to explain the kind of outcomes that we see. It's more likely that there is a range of disadvantages experienced by disabled people which lead to this difference for non-disabled and disabled people.   MF  Overall then, an awful lot of work is being done, a wealth of data and understanding, where's this work going now? And how it can inform really effective interventions and policies and services to support disabled people?  HC  As we mentioned, we measure disability against the Equality Act, and that's really crucial for us to be able to understand how as a country we are performing in terms of monitoring and reducing inequalities for disabled people. The data that we collect and publish then feeds directly to policy makers. So one of our key stakeholders for my team is the Cabinet Office and working with their disability units. We make sure that they have the information they need to make policy but also thinking about local authorities monitoring that policy impact, monitoring the outcomes in their area and thinking about what they can do in terms of planning to support disabled people. But also our data is used widely by the third sector and lobbyists to hold government to account, to look at these inequalities and say, what's happening here? What are you doing about this and of course, it's really valuable for the citizen users and public interest to know what the situation is for disabled people in our population.   MF  Well, that is it for another episode of Statistically Speaking, thanks very much to all our guests for another fascinating discussion. For news about these podcasts, and the work of the Office for National Statistics, and to comment or ask us a question, please find us on Twitter at @ONSFocus. That’s it from me Miles Fletcher. Our producer at the ONS is Julia Short. Thanks for listening, and until next time, goodbye.  ENDS

With news headlines proclaiming the UK has ‘narrowly avoided a recession’, we decode the ‘r’ word and explain why this sometimes misleading term is one the ONS is often cautious to avoid. We get the lowdown on GDP (Gross Domestic Product); discuss whether its time as the yardstick for measuring the success or failure of the world’s economies is coming to an end; and hear how the ONS is already looking well ‘Beyond GDP’ and introducing broader measures of social wellbeing and the environment to provide us with a more holistic view of how society is faring.  Joining Miles is ONS Director of Economic Statistics, Darren Morgan, Chief Economist, Grant Fitzner; and Director of Public Policy Analysis, Liz McKeown.  Links Latest GDP data Measures of National Well-being Beyond GDP   Transcript  MILES FLETCHER  Welcome again to Statistically Speaking the official podcast of the UK’s Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher, and this time, we're going to talk about a very famous and long running statistic that’s still regarded as the single most important economic indicator of them all. I'm talking of course about GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the expansion or contraction of which is the yardstick against which the success or failure of the world's economies is measured. It's been around a long time, since around the time of the Second World War, in fact, but is its pre-eminence now coming to an end? GDP misses some things out - that which matters, as was once memorably claimed. So we'll be talking about how the ONS has been updating GDP to keep it relevant and developing new complementary measures of economic and social wellbeing that could perhaps, in future, supplant GDP itself. And in the current economic climate, we cannot avoid the “R” word. What exactly is a recession? How much does it actually matter, if it's only a technical one? Is it the difference between economic disaster and salvation? Spoiler alert, it really isn't.   Anyway, we have a panel of top ONS folk to explain it all: Darren Morgan is director of economic statistics production and analysis, Grant Fitzner is Chief Economist and director of macro-economic statistics and analysis, and also with us is Liz McKeown, Director of Public Policy Analysis, who is leading the drive towards these broader measures on social and economic welfare.   Welcome, everyone.   Darren to start with you. You are responsible for the production of the UK’s GDP estimates. So let's start by reminding ourselves what precisely it measures, it's basically seeking to put a value on all economic activity over a given period.     DARREN MORGAN  Yeah, so we look at GDP and we measure the economy in three different ways. First of all, we do it via what you call the output approach, and most simply, that's everything that's produced in the economy, and that can be cars rolling off the production line, that can be a lawyer providing advice as a service, and it can be public services as well. So surgeries, GP appointments and so on. So everything we produce in the economy. We also look at measuring the economy, everything that is spent, so that could be you and I in household, spending money in the shops or on leisure activities. It can be businesses spending money on goods and services. And it can also mean the government spending money, so everything we spend as well. And the third way we measure GDP is the income approach, which is basically everything that's earned in the economy. So for us in terms of households that's wages and salaries, for businesses it’s profit, for example. So we measure everything we produce, everything we spend and everything we earn, and in principle, they should all add up.    MF  And you're boiling it down then, a vast amount of data flowing into the ONS, boiling it all down to one single indicator.   DM  We do, and we do that by approaching thousands and thousands of businesses asking them about their performance. We speak to thousands of households about their behaviour. And we also use a lot of data already available withing government, so what we call administrative data - data that already exists. And we bring all those different data sources into the building, we look at it and we confront it, and we come up with ultimately, as you suggest, a single number on the growth of the economy.   MF What's changed in the in the collection of data now? How timely a process is this?     DM  So in the UK, we've got one of the timeliest measures of the economy in the world. And we only have one of two countries who produce a monthly measure the economy, so we do it much more quickly, and obviously it is completely different to how we did it say, even 10 or 15 years ago. We collect most of our data now from businesses online. Whereas previously we used to send a questionnaire to them, used to write the questionnaire and they would send it back to us, and that could take a week or weeks to do that. Businesses can fill the form in now sat at their desk online, do it very quickly and it reaches us straightaway.   MF  And you mentioned administrative data as well. So that's coming from other parts of government. What are the main sources there? How is that gathered?   DM  So that's correct. So what we try to do is minimise the burden on businesses and households, so some businesses may have to complete a tax return to HMRC for example. So we are able to use that information and bring it in, so that's one example. Pay As You Earn, people who use pay as you earn systems, will be well aware that we use that in our labour market numbers. But we use lots of different sources that are already available across government, and we reuse them for statistical purposes, like I said, to provide better estimates, because that data tends to be very good, but also to minimise the burden, as I said on households and businesses at the same time.   MF  And what is the coverage, in terms of what's included, how has that evolved in recent years?  DM  So in a way, in terms of what we call the boundary, the economic boundary, that has actually stayed very similar over a long period of time. It is very traditional in terms of the boundary we measure. So, like I said, it's sort of business activities, household activity and government activity. But it is along those lines about how much is produced, how much is spent, how much is earned, but the boundary for the economy has been very similar for 50 years.   MF  Nevertheless, there are some things included in GDP which might surprise some people. For example, in the most recent GDP release we talked about the fall in the number of pupils in classrooms in the last quarter of 2022.  DM  The public services was actually a really key indicator for the number that we published for December, and we saw a fall in the number of GP appointments, a fall in the number of operations, less vaccinations being given because the autumn booster campaign tailed off. And we also saw lower attendance in schools, because in the lead up to Christmas not so many pupils will go into school as we normally see. And the reason why we measure that, as you can imagine we measure teacher salaries, doctor salaries, we measure how much is invested in the health service, how much is invested in schools, and obviously those schools and hospitals buy goods and services. So, it's a really important part of the economy. So of course we measure the goods and services that they produce as well. It's a really important part of the economic measurement for GDP.  MF  And I think I’m going to use it to motivate my children in the mornings as well. When they go off to school I’ll be reminding them of their contribution to our economic performance.  DM  They certainly are. So it's a really good way to get them through the school day, Miles.   MF  But there's a serious point underlying this, and there's a bit of a propaganda point for the ONS here as well, as it because we are actually taking real measurements of public sector activity, and it's been said that some countries just make broad assumptions about that activity. What do we do that other countries don't?   DM  You’re absolutely right, Miles. And that became most marked during the lockdowns during, the COVID pandemic. So we measured, if I can give schools and education as an example, we actually measured how much education was being provided to pupils during a lockdown, whether that was face-to-face in schools, or whether it was remote learning, or whether unfortunately, in some cases, there was no learning at all. We measured that directly, whereas perhaps some other countries basically measured the number of pupils. So as you can imagine, the number of pupils is the same whether they are getting taught or not. So in the pandemic we showed a sharp fall in education during some of the lock downs, but we've seen a faster recovery in the years that followed. Whereas if you look at other countries, their measurement of education has been far more stable over the most recent years because the numbers of pupils doesn't really change.  MF   They are pretending that the schools were open, when in fact, they weren’t. Anyway, that's just part of this enormous data gathering operation, bringing in all this data, and it takes around about six weeks to produce the preliminary estimate, which you say is among the quickest of the estimates, but of course that's only part of the story, isn't it?   DM  That's pretty quick, six weeks, but we do produce an estimate for all three measures, we produce a measurement how much is produced, how much is spent, and how much is earned at that point in time. So we do that, but obviously, we only have so much data at that point. You know, we have quite a lot of data to actually because those surveys are very timely, but not everything.  MF  As a percentage, it's about 40% isn’t it?  DM  That's correct. But obviously our data collection doesn't stop at that point. We continue to bring new data in. And that's why we publish the latest estimate, which covers more detail, more granularity, different parts of the economy. And that additional data that's brought in allows us to do that at a later stage.   MF  You have a couple more months to produce that one, and that's based on pretty much all of the data we're going to get.   DM  Yeah, it's over 90% of that stage, it’s about 90%. So yes, we have between the first estimate and the second estimate, we do get a lot more data in.  MF  And therein lies, what some people might say is one of the weaknesses of GDP, and particularly when making quick assumptions about the economy. There's a trade-off here isn't there, about wanting to know broadly where the economy is going, and making really, really hard and fast assumptions about what's happening. And therein lies the whole issue of revisions, revising GDP. Now, it's important for everyone to understand that when the ONS revises GDP, it's not correcting its mistakes is it.  DM  What you’re describing there Miles is a classic tension in statistical production. So we could say to everybody, our users, no, we're not going to publish anything until we get all that data, all that 90% of data. But to do that, you're going to have to wait about 80 days. Or what we could do is drag an earlier estimate based on less data, but still not a really good estimate, but you could have that 40 days quicker, 50 days quicker. So you know, there's that tension between timeliness and quality. And I think the way we do it, I think it's brilliant. We published two estimates initially, and that’s for the quarter. The one that's a bit quicker based on less data, and the one later based on more data content. But what we do to help our users is we have a really detailed revisions analysis between those estimates, so people can look and judge typically, how often and how much is that data revised when we publish. So they have the full information in front of them to make judgments if they have to. And I think we strike the right balance taking that approach.   MF  What is the ONS’ track record in doing this? Because have there been occasions perhaps, as has been suggested, sometimes that the early data can be misleading, and in fact, the economy might be heading in the opposite direction.   DM  So if you're looking at revisions analysis, it's pretty good, you know, within the first estimate, and that second estimate, and so revisions are typically very small, and importantly, unbiased, they're equally likely to be a revision up or a revision down, and that's really, really important. I think when a real spotlight is shone on revisions, that’s when the economy is around zero, you know if you have a 0.1 revision, which is a small revision if your economy is going along at 0.8, 0.7%. You know, whether it’s 0.7, 0.6 and so on, people go ‘Ah, so what?’. But if the economy is going around zero, or 0.1 or –0.1, that 0.1 revision can change the sign, and people get very excited about that. But actually, it's a 0.1 revision, and that's when the spotlight is really, like I said, is shone on the revisions performance  MF  As it was in our most recent estimate of quarterly GDP, the final quarter of 2022 when there was a big fat zero in terms of growth. Now, that led to headlines in some very respectable media organisations that went “UK narrowly avoided recession”. Well, did we?  DM  So we did technically yes, we did. Absolutely. Because it wasn't negative. That was our Q3 estimate of the economy was for a four, so if Q4 fell for economic growth, a technical recession, which is widely recognised as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Yes, we would have been in a technical recession. But I think you've just highlighted how it makes sense to look more broadly at the economy because whether it was 0, or –0.1, 0.1, how different really was the economy at that point in time? I would say the economy was broadly flat.  MF  Because if you're beholden to this idea of a technical recession, a couple of months down the line we might say hang on, our better estimate based on 95% of the data says actually it was just slightly down, and therefore the headline writers say, “Oh, we were in recession after all.”  DM  Exactly. I think that just highlights, again, being sensible in terms of how you look at the economy overall, because really the economy, if it's a 0.1 revision ,if that's what happens in it in a few weeks time, is the economy fundamentally different to what it is at that moment? I would suggest not, but you're right, I would imagine that it would get splashed that the UK is now in recession, and coverage will be significant because of that.   MF  And it's fair to say that in the past these technical recessions, there was a double-dip recession wasn't there about 10 years ago, that made a lot of headlines at the time. It's not in the figures anymore.   DM  No, it's not. It's been revised and that period of our economic history when we were around that flat period for the economy. So the revisions have been relatively small in that period, but you're right, we were in recession and because we had revisions from later data, we no longer were. And as you suggested people got very excited about that. But really, Miles, the economy was in exactly the same position as it was in our first estimate.   MF  So a strong message there listeners, when you hear people talk about a technical recession, bear in mind, that may not be what it sounds like. In fact, it probably almost certainly isn't.  DM  Good advice, Miles.   MF   Grant, to bring you in on this then, from an economist's perspective, it's fair to say then that in fact, there's no definition of a recession that's really official or formally accepted anywhere. It's certainly not something that the ONS talks about.   GRANT FITZNER  No, I mean, ultimately, it's a matter of judgement. And of course, economists spend a lot of time arguing about these things. In fact, it was so bad in the US that academic economists, as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research set up a committee to discuss and agree on when business cycles were, well when recessions started and when they ended, so that when they were comparing their research they were all working off a common framework. Now, that sounds great, but the problem of course is with this being academics, they looked at a wide range of data, and they typically took several years after a recession had occurred before they would put definitive data out of it. Now, that's fine if you're publishing economic history, but if you're a journalist or indeed if you're working at the Office for National Statistics and you want to have an idea of what's going on now, you need something that's a bit closer to real time, and that does, as Darren said, involve a degree of judgement. But I think it's fair to say that the common sense understanding of a recession is a prolonged and significant downturn in economic activity. So not just one or two quarters, and not just a 0.1, but actually something a bit more substantial, as indeed we've seen in the 70s and the 80s, and of course, in the global financial crisis that kicked off in 2008. So they typically last for a while, and they do have quite a significant impact on the economy, households and business.   MF  In fact, that’s a lot more serious isn't it, than the definition that's used as a sort of working rule of thumb, which is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. In fact the origins of that are very murky, really, nobody actually seems to know precisely where it came from. One of President Nixon’s speech writers seems to be the main suspect.   GF  Well, possibly, but it has been more widely used. I think journalists need something quick and simple to understand, and I guess this meets the bill. But imagine if you had a –0.1 in one quarter and then a –0.1 in the next, and then they were subsequently revised away, I don't think anyone would seriously call that a recession. And just the point about the length as well, if you look at the 70s, 80s, or 90s, recessions typically last about three years. That's how long it took for the level of economic activity to get back to the pre-recession levels, and indeed for the global financial crisis that kicked off in 2008, it took four and a half years before growth was back at pre-recession levels, so an incredibly long time. And I think just looking at the pandemic and the impact that that had in 2020, it's a very different set of events. We had two negative quarters and then the economy started to recover after of course, a very large fall. Now that's unusual. And of course that was because of this shock of the pandemic and lockdowns. Whereas typically, these things take quite a bit longer to kind of work their way through the system.   MF  And if you look at the path of GDP on the time-series graphic on the ONS website, it really goes off a ski slope doesn't it, really quite dramatically as the pandemic starts and then kind of sharply recovers, and then it's kind of clawing its way back now.   GF  That's right. And so things are often slower than we may be used to in recent years. And to give you an example of that, at the moment, we have the Bank of England raising rates quite aggressively so interest rates have gone up, mortgages have gone up, businesses are facing higher costs of borrowing, but the labour market still looks pretty robust. Now historically, if you look at past recessions, there's always a bit of a lag between, for example, central bank tightening or some sort of supply shock and for that to work its way through in terms of employment, business, profitability, and so forth. So these things often take longer than people expect. Now, I'm not saying of course, that that means we're in a prolonged economic downturn. I mean forecasters differ as to how severe and how long the current period of economic weakness is likely to be and indeed, people disagree on whether we may even enter recession this year. It's that close.   MF  But we'll know if we’re in a significant downturn, a genuine recession or whatever label we want to apply, when it happens, but at the moment we seem to be in sort of somewhere in between. Disappointing though that might be for headline writers.  GF  And the sort of things that you would typically look at would be more businesses going out of business, so business liquidations, weak retail spending, which of course we have seen, driven by the big increase in the cost of living over the past six months, and significant increases in the level of unemployment. Those are three of the things that you would typically look at. Possibly also weaker industrial production is often associated with recessions as well.   MF  So does that suggest then, talking about the action being in those other indicators, does that period for the economy, perhaps an economy on the cusp of growth and contraction, does that highlight one of the major limitations of GDP as a measure? How seriously do economists regard it now? Does it remain that big, totemic bellwether of economic success or failure?   GF  Well it is a broad and pretty comprehensive measure, so it does include income, expenditure and output. So a lot of what you would typically consider economic activity, but of course it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't cover anything produced in households, at the moment it doesn't properly capture what's going on in the natural environment. So it's certainly not broad enough to cover every kind of activity that produces something of value. And it typically focuses on things that can be measured or quantified, or have a value ascribed to them. So the market sector is the largest part of the economy that we measure through gross domestic product, because there's also the non-market sector, public sector charities, etc. They are a bit harder to measure. One of the interesting differences between the UK approach and some other countries is that we spent quite a bit of time trying to measure not just how much we spend on health and education, but as Darren said, what actual activity, what outputs, are we getting from that investment?   MF  Yeah, I mentioned at the top of the podcast, there's this famous quote from Robert Kennedy, of course, famously US Attorney General and then presidential candidate. He actually said the problem with GDP is it does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It doesn't include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of public officials, etcetera, etcetera. It seems to me that the demand then for more holistic measures of well-being or progress, in fact goes well beyond economics, but is there more that economics can contribute? And what is the ONS doing towards that?   GF  Yes, there is more that we can do. And indeed, we have been doing that. So we've created a series of what we call satellite accounts, which measure either different parts of the economy or activity, or indeed measure things that are currently outside of what we call the national accounts. So for example, we've been publishing at the ONS for quite some time now an annual series of natural capital accounts, which tried to convey you what's been produced out there in the environment. Clean air, for example, is an output of trees and vegetation and parks. We try and put estimates around those. Now, of course, there's some challenging methodological issues about how you measure some of these things, but I think we've had quite some success in actually putting some values around those. And at the international level, the current system of national accounts was devised back in 2010, there's quite a lively, if indeed statisticians can have a lively debate, around what the next system of national accounts will look like, which is due to come in 2025. And one of those very issues is do we start to bring the environment more into those measurements.  MF  So not quite the beauty of our poetry but certainly the landscape, the value of our environment.   GF  Exactly. And I suppose the other misconception about GDP is people often see it as a measure of well-being. It was never really designed to play that role. It's a measure of economic activity. Now, of course, there’s a clear link between economic activity, prosperity, and well-being, but they're not the same concept.   MF   So in order to be more inclusive, and to fully reflect activity in its broadest sense, we're having to go much further than that. And a bold initiative in that direction, started more than a decade ago now, was the national well-being programme launched by the then Prime Minister David Cameron.   Liz McKeown, the National well-being programme was, it was not taken wholly seriously. I recall at the time it was dubbed as Cameron's Happiness Index, and the idea that we could dump GDP and inflation and so forth was taken with some mirth. Ten years on, how far have we come to developing alternative measures like that, and how seriously have they been taken?  LIZ MCKEOWN  I think we've come a long way, but perhaps it's worth us looking back to those days of 2010 and what we did then, we wanted to know what matters most to people. And we went out and asked them and we had over 34,000 responses to that debate. And that allowed us to start measuring well-being for the first time as a national statistical Institute, that debate, understanding what really mattered to the public, getting those responses allowed us to develop 10 domains of well-being. These are the things that people were saying really mattered to how they felt as individuals, as a community, and you know, ultimately as a nation. And the domains that we developed there were personal well-being, they were our relationships, our health, what we do, where we live, our personal finances, our education and skills, the economy, governance, and the environment. And under those 10 domains, we developed a number of measures, both objective and subjective, which allowed us to begin to get to that question of how are we doing as the UK in a more holistic way than economic measures can do alone.   MF  And what story has that told over the years? How were we doing? How are we doing?   LM  I think it opens a new lens and allows us to think about that quite differently. Perhaps I could take an example of how we thought about well-being during the pandemic, there we were wanting to understand what's the impact of lockdowns more broadly, and we could use wellbeing measures to help us understand that. We could see how personal well-being and levels of loneliness were, you know, really negatively impacted during the lockdown, and then we could see the improvements as we came out of them. We could see how that differed by how men and women were doing. We saw during the pandemic women's well-being falling below men's for the first time, and so we could understand a different dimension of how society was reacting to one of the big issues of our time.   MF  And when we ask people how happy they are, they tend to give quite a positive response, don't they?   LM  Well, I think it's important to say that wellbeing goes beyond just asking people how happy they are. So personal well-being does look at people's happiness, it looks at their levels of anxiety, and it looks at how satisfied they are with their life and how worthwhile they think the things in their life are. But the broader concept of wellbeing is understanding how people are doing across these domains that I mentioned earlier.   MF  Now this isn't just suddenly what's been going on in the UK, there's something of a global movement to broaden out our approach to measuring not just personal well-being, but economic well-being as well. And an important part of that is the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. And put quite simply, it's a global initiative to find out if the world is becoming a better place, and to set targets and then policies from that.  LM  Yeah, absolutely Miles. And I think it reflects doesn't it that people do want to understand progress in that multi-dimensional way. They want to understand not just how we're doing economically, but actually what the impact on our environment is, what the impact on our society is. And those indicator-based approaches, be they the well-being measures that we've developed here in the UK, be they the Sustainable Development Goals, they're allowing us to take that broader check on progress or sort of multi-dimensional check on progress and allows us to see things that we couldn't see if we were only looking at the core economic statistics that you were discussing with colleagues earlier.   MF  Now on GDP day when the ONS produces its quarterly estimates of economic performance in that traditional sense that we talked about with Darren, there are two important publications that do get slightly overlooked on the day but are well worth highlighting now. And the first of those is one entitled quality of life in the UK. Sounds intriguing. Tell us about that.   LM  These two publications we added to the mix on GDP day last year, and why did we do that? I think it really wanted to reflect how important it is that we look at progress in that multi-dimensional way that I was talking about earlier. That we give people the chance to see not just what the latest economic data is telling us, but we are also looking at how life is going for people in the UK, and that's where the quality of life in the UK publication comes in.  MF  Break down the elements for that if you would, tell us what sort of narrative it's providing at the moment about our quality of life.   LM  Yeah, so this is a publication that every quarter looks across those 10 domains of national well-being, personal well-being, relationships, health what we do where we live personal finance, economy, education skills governance in the environment. It looks at the measures we have under those domains and says well, what news have we got from the last quarter. And I won’t go through all that here, I encourage you to go and have a read of it, it makes interesting reading. But for example, on the personal well-being side, we have seen in the last quarter a drop in the percentage of adults who've seen very high levels of life satisfaction and happiness. There's been a decrease in that. So that's one to watch, and one to keep an eye out for. But the publication goes across the 10 domains and yeah, as I said Miles, well worth a read   MF  An interesting alternative view as well at a time when the classic economic data was showing a big zero reading. In fact, there's another aspect in which an awful lot is going on, and obviously a downward trend there in some respects, at least.   LM  Absolutely. And users are telling us that they want to understand what's going on across the country in a more holistic sense and understand a bit more about our societal measures, but also about our environmental measures. And I guess that sort of takes us on to the other publication that we put out on GDP day on climate change insights. And if you take all those three publications as a whole, so the quarterly GDP figures, the quality of life in the UK and the climate change insights publication, you're basically allowing the public policymakers to look and understand, okay, what's the latest developments in the economy? What's the latest developments in society and people's well-being and what's the latest environmental developments? And it's allowing us to begin to answer that question, how is the UK doing in a much more holistic way than we've been able to before.  MF  So I guess what I'm taking away from this lightning tour of a fascinating and extremely diverse environment, is that when you see headlines saying the economy is neither growing nor contracting, there's a much, much bigger story out there and there's a much bigger story to be learned by looking at the ONS data.   LM  That's exactly right. And we're not standing still either as an office as well. We want to make sure that what we're measuring is still what matters most to people. As I said, that's how we started the well-being programme in the first place by going out to the nation and asking them what matters most. That was over a decade ago, and obviously, a lot has changed over the last 10 years. So it felt like a good time to take that step back and think, are we still measuring the best things to measure in our well-being programme, and the National Statistician kicked off a review of those measures back in October. So we're working through that at the moment and in the spring we’ll be presenting some recommendations for how we can do this even better in the future.   MF   And where do you think is going to lead? Do you think GDP might be toppled off its perch and we'll be able to produce one big comprehensive indicator that would bring in all that economic activity as well? Is that Is that where we're headed?   LM  I think GDP will always be an influential statistic. As a measure of the productive economy there are huge strengths to it. And strengths are continuing to increase as it becomes, as I think Darren mentioned earlier, more timely, better quality. So GDP is important and will remain important for ONS. But we also know that looking at progress more broadly than GDP is more important than ever to members of the public who want to understand how we're doing, but also to policymakers who are looking at future policies and providing statistics and insights that help both the public and policymakers to make the best possible decisions. That is what we are, as a national statistical institute all, about. So GDP, important, but actually having a full range of data and statistics and insights that go beyond that. That's where the future is.  MF  Darren, as the person responsible for producing GDP, that's a challenge for the future then?  DARREN MORGAN  That’s right and I think Liz summed it up really well. I think GDP is important, but it's not everything.   MF   Well thanks very much to all our guests for a fascinating discussion there, and we'll put links to some of the ONS publications we discussed in the programme notes for further reading.   I'm Miles Fletcher. And thanks for listening to Statistically Speaking. You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and all the other major podcast platforms. With thanks to our producer Steve Milne, it's time to say, until next time, goodbye. 

Miles explores how data linking can help tackle cross-cutting issues in an increasingly uncertain world, and how the ONS’ new Integrated Data Service will provide a step-change transformation in how researchers will be able to access public data.  Joining him are ONS colleagues Bill South, Deputy Director of Research Services and Data Access; Jason Yaxley, Director of the Integrated Data Programme; and award-winning researcher Dr Becky Arnold, from the University of Keele.    TRANSCRIPT  MILES FLETCHER  Welcome again to Statistically Speaking - the Office for National Statistics Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher and in this episode, we're going to step back from the big news making numbers and take a detailed look at an aspect of the ONS which is, less well known, but arguably just as important.   The ONS gather an awful lot of data of course, and much of it remains valuable long after it's been turned into published statistics. It is used by analysts and government, universities and the wider research community. So we're going to explain how that's done and look at some really interesting and valuable examples of how successful that has been to date. And we're also going to hear about a step-change transformation that's now underway in how public data is made available to researchers, and the future potential of that really important, exciting process. Our guides through this subject are Jason Yaxley, Director of the ONS’s integrated data programme, Bill South who is Deputy Director of the Research Services and Data Access Division here at the ONS, and later in the podcast we’ll hear from Dr. Becky Arnold who is an award-winning researcher from Keele University.   Right Bill, set the scene for us to start with then, we are talking here about the ONS Secure Research Service, take it from the top please. What is it? What's it all about? What does it do? What do we get from it?     BILL SOUTH   Hi Miles, thank you. Yes, the Secure Research Service, or the SRS, is the ONS’ trusted research environment. We've been running now for about 15 years, and we provide secure access to unpublished de-identified micro data for research that's in the public good. So in terms of numbers, we hold over 130 datasets, we've got about 5000 Researchers accredited to use the service and about 1500 of those would be working in the system at any given time on about 600 live projects.    MF  So what sort of data, what is stored and what's made available? Is this survey responses?    BS  Traditionally the SRS has held most of our ONS surveys. So that's the labour market, business...all of our surveys really. In the last four years, thanks to funding we've received from Administrative Data Research UK (ADRUK), we've been able to grow the amount of data we hold, so now we've increasingly got data coming from other government departments. And we've got more linked datasets that enable us to offer new insights into the data.    MF  And so these are people's responses to survey questions and people's records, as well as data that are held by other departments?    BS  Indeed, yes, the data coming from other departments is often administrative data, so not from surveys but more admin data.    MF  And a lot of the value in that is in being able to compare and to link this data to achieve different research insights?    BS  Absolutely. I mean, a good example of that is a dataset that's been added in the last year or so where our ONS census data from 2011 was linked to educational attainment data from the Department for Education into a research dataset called Growing up in England (GUiE). And it's hugely important because we have a lot of rich information from the census but you know, linking that with the educational attainment data offers new insights about how kids do at school, and how they're linked to the characteristics of their background.    MF  So you use the underpinning of census to provide a really universal picture of what's going on across that particular population, and therefore gain some insight into how people have achieved educationally in a way that we wouldn't have done before. Of course, all this and the power of it is clear in that example, but a lot of people might think, oh my gosh, they must know an awful lot about me that in that case, tell us about how privacy and anonymity are protected in those circumstances.    BS  Yeah, absolutely. It's a central part of their operation, and clearly the word secure in the name is key there. So we follow a five safes principle which underpins everything we do. The five safes are safe people, so that anyone who uses the SRS has to be trained and go through an assessment to be accredited by us to use the environment. Once they're accredited, they then have to apply to have a project that's running in the system, and that gets independently assessed. There are a number of checks around whether it's ethically sound, whether the use of data is appropriate, but the key thing really is around the public good. So all research projects that happen in the SRS have to be in the public good and there's a commitment to be transparent. So every project that happens in the SRS, there's a record which is published on the UK Statistics Authority website. The third safe is around the settings, so it's a very controlled environment where people access the data. The fourth stage is around the data, so although we've said it's record level data it's already identified. Names and addresses, any identifiers are stripped out of the data before researchers can access it. And the final stage, the final part of the of the researcher journey if you like, is around outputs. What that means is we do checks to ensure that when any analysis leaves the environment that no individual or business can be identified for the published results.    MF  So in essence, you must convince the ONS that you are a Bonafide researcher, and you also have to convince them that what you're doing is definitely for the public benefit.    BS  That's right. And the other thing that's worth noting is that the SRS, like a number of other trusted research environments across the country, has been accredited under the Digital Economy Act to be a data processor, which means we go through a rigorous assessment process around the security, the environment, but also our capability to run it. So that's our processes, our procedures, whether our staff are adequately trained to run the service. That's a key part of that accreditation under the Digital Economy Act.    MF  So, on that point then about anonymity, you can drill right down to individual level, but you'll never know who those individuals actually are or be able to identify them?    BS  That's right. Researchers typically will run their code against the record level data, but when they've got the results of the analysis, there are clear rules that say you won't be allowed to take out very low counts. So that means like our published outputs, there's no way of identifying anyone once the research is published.    MF  And the SRS has built up over the years a good reputation for actually doing this effectively and efficiently.    BS  Yes, I think that's fair to say. We have a good reputation, and the service is growing in terms of the number of datasets and the number of projects and the number of people using it. So, I think that speaks for itself.    MF  Okay, let's pull out another I think powerful example of why this facility is so important and that comes from the recent COVID pandemic. Many listeners will be aware that the ONS ran a very, very large survey involving upwards of 100,000 people providing samples, taking COVID tests, and they were sent off to be analysed creating an awful lot of community level data about COVID infections, and we in the ONS then publish our estimates and continue to do so as we record estimates every week of fluctuating infection levels. But behind all that work, there were expert researchers in institutions around the country who were doing far more with that data. And the SRS was fundamental to delivering the data to them. Tell us about how that operated Bill, and some of the results that we got out of it.    BS  Yeah, sure. I mean, the COVID infection survey that you refer to there, that dataset is available for accredited researchers to apply to use, and they have done, but we've also brought in a number of others, about 20 COVID related datasets are in the SRS, so things around vaccination or the schools infection survey, mortality, etc.   So since the start of the pandemic we've had over 50 projects that have either taken place and completed, or are currently underway, in the environment. Some of those are directly using the COVID related dataset. So looking, if you like, at the health impact, but there's also projects that are are looking at, if you like, non COVID data, economic data or education data, that are projects dedicated to understanding the impact of COVID.    MF  What sort of insights have we seen from those?    BS  In terms of those using the COVID related data there's been analysis to highlight the disproportionate impact of the virus on ethnic minorities, that went on to implement a number of government interventions. Another project assessed the role of schools in the in the Coronavirus transmission. We had another project that was run specifically on behalf of local authorities to inform their response to the pandemic that offered insights into the risks between occupation. Also research into footfall in retail centres and how business sectors were affected by the pandemic. So a really huge range of things. There were other research projects looking at the impact and you know, an example there was a project that looked at learning loss. So, kids not being in school for that sort of 20 to 21 academic year. Similarly, the Bank of England ran a project looking at the financial stability of the UK during the pandemic period. So hopefully those examples give you this sense of the range.    MF  An incredibly impressive array of projects, all underpinned by that big survey, the likes of which the ONS has a unique ability to run, that big survey taking part run across the United Kingdom of people providing and answering questionnaires as well as providing survey samples. And don't take our word for it, I mean, it was reported in the Daily Mirror no less. A researcher who benefited from that data described the COVID Infection Survey as, when it came to the pandemic, one of the most valuable resources on the planet. So that's a powerful example of the research value that can be extracted through the secondary uses of data gathered by the ONS.   Anyway, enough of blowing our own trumpet, the service has been running a very successful award scheme that recognises the achievements of external researchers Bill. Tell us about some of the projects that have been recognised in that.    BS  It’s worth mentioning I think also that we've got case studies on our website, the Secure Research Service website and the ADRUK website, which show in a little bit more detail the impact some of these research projects have had, but like you say, we also hold an annual Research Excellence Awards, which is great. We have different categories of awards where people can submit their project and explain where their research has been published and had an impact. And like I said, we get a lot of nominations and reviewing the applications, which I did last year, it really emphasises the breadth and quality of the research taking place in the SRS.    MF  Check those out then if you're interested in learning more about those projects, some of the examples that Bill mentions and winners of the Research Excellence Awards, of course, one of whom I'm very pleased to say joins us now and that's Dr. Becky Arnold from the University of Keele, who took home the cross-government analysis award for her team's work on controlling the spread of COVID-19 in vulnerable settings in a project undertaken at the UK health security agency.   Becky I guess that's but another example of the kind of secondary uses of the COVID infection data. Welcome to the podcast. Please tell us all about that.    Dr. Becky Arnold  Yeah, very, very glad to. So first thing I want to talk about essentially is what a vulnerable setting is. And that was really key to the sort of cross governmental aspects of this because vulnerable settings are settings like care homes, hospitals, prisons, schools, where you have a lot of quite often vulnerable people in a really dense environment where COVID can sort of spread and get out of control really quickly. And if we want to define a testing policy for that, so our testing policy being perhaps everybody takes like three LFT tests a week, or maybe one monthly PCR test, but also other factors, like what's your isolation policy? So, if somebody is infected with COVID, how many days do they have to be isolated for? Do they need a negative test to be released? What is your outbreak policy in these institutions, if you know that there's an outbreak going on? It's this really, really complicated thing. And you know, for government policy, you need a testing regime to try and keep COVID under control in these settings. But there's a few difficulties with that. The first thing is that the settings are all really different. So, when I just mentioned about the cross governmental thing, it meant interacting with lots of different departments, lots of different data sources to try and understand these particular settings and their particular characteristics. The really, really critical point I want to make is that the whole project was about trying to understand what that testing policy should be. And the best testing policy in one setting may not be the best testing policy in another setting, because when we're trying to give advice to policymakers and policy departments about what testing strategy you should use in an institution, you don't want to just pull that out of the hat. You don't want to just go oh, I think this many LFT tests a week. We want to give data-driven, informed, evidence-based advice. So essentially, what this project was looking at was all of these different settings in a lot of detail, looking at the demographics within them and their particular vulnerabilities. So, care home residents are particularly vulnerable, as are people in prison. They're more clinically vulnerable than people of the same age that are not in prison and a bunch of different aspects, how people interact in these different settings, how infection spreads in these different settings. And from that, essentially, we created a model where you can simulate the spread of COVID in these different settings under different testing strategies. So, you can answer questions like if we use ‘x’ testing strategy versus ‘y’ testing strategy, what is the likely impact going to be on the number of people that died, the number of people that need hospitalisation, how many of those people that go to hospital are going to need intensive care, which often comes with long recovery and sometimes permanent impacts on people's lives. So, there are huge things to consider. And it's actually the point of this project was to study these environments and try and make something which can provide that evidence to inform decision making.    MF  This was data being gathered, presumably then in institutional settings up and down the country and then being collected centrally and made available to you at a single point of contact?    BA  It would have been very nice if that was the case. Because we're looking at so many different settings we were kind of scrambling around quite a lot just to try and identify what datasets were available and to sort of gather them together. And also there were so many different types of data that we needed to drive this. So firstly, like you say, the health outcomes data, in some cases, there were specific datasets available for certain institution types, but we weren't always able to get access to those for various reasons. But there were also considerations like the sort of data that was published every day, there's sort of a nationwide aspect, when we're also looking at another data type is how people interact within these different settings. For that we used an awful lot of literature review. We spoke to people that work in the settings. We spoke to people that work in care homes, we spoke to care homes franchise owners to understand their staffing policies and things related to that. We also spoke to government departments like the Department of Justice. So, it was a lot of different data sources all sort of gathered together for the various aspects of this project.    MF  This model you’ve created, what's its future? Perhaps in different scenarios that might arise in the future.     BA  The model was very, very carefully constructed to be as flexible as possible at the time for potential future COVID variants in mind, but because of that, it means it's very adaptable to different infectious diseases. So if you change just a few input parameters, like the mortality rates, you know, the infection rate, a few factors like that, it's quite easy to transform this model to simulate the spread of other infectious diseases. So, things like flu, which has a big impact on care homes every year and has the potential to be used to better understand how to combat that. But another thing that I think is very useful about this model is it has the ability to help us in game plan for potential future pandemics, because I think it's fair to say that governments around the world when COVID came along, were kind of caught by surprise, or wrong-footed, sort of without a game plan of how to respond. And as we know, the early stages, whether it's a single pandemic or an individual outbreak, it's those early stages which are really, really critical. With this sort of model, we can gameplan you know, what response should we give if we have a future pandemic with these properties? Say we've got this transmissibility, it's got this mortality rate, we have tests that cost this much and they give you this accuracy. In that scenario, what should we do? And to be able to do that research upfront and to have some sort of game plan in mind so that if and when future pandemics come along, we are better prepared and can respond efficiently and quickly to try and have the best outcomes possible. So that's something I think is really exciting for the for the future of this model.    MF   Okay, that's beautifully explained, thank you very much indeed.  Bill, so we've heard from Becky about how the data that she had to access had to come from many different places, but I guess that might have been an impediment to actually producing a model as rapidly in the pressing circumstances of the pandemic as it could potentially have been achieved. Does that suggest then that while the SRS has achieved on its own terms, a great deal, nevertheless, there have been limitations, and perhaps it's time to be doing this kind of data sharing across the public sector in a much bigger and better way?    BS  Yes. When I look at the sort of challenges and limitations around the SRS, I think there's probably three things, one of which is the ability to get the data sharing moving as fast as we need to meet this sort of policy need. The second area would be around the fact that actually the SRS is ageing technology now, and although it's performed really well, and especially during that sort of pandemic response we talked about earlier, it's fair to say it has struggled to cope with some of the really sort of heavy processing requirements that have come out of during that sort of COVID response. Some of the modelling required was much larger than the traditional sort of research projects we might have had in the SRS. And then the final thing is around some of the processes that we described earlier, that sort of five stages framework. All of our processes and rules apply to users, regardless of their sector. What that means is for government analysts who are seeking to access government data, working on government systems to inform government policy, there's a feeling that we could do things faster. Only 25% of our user base is government analysts at the moment, you know, I think that's something we certainly could improve to build that area of the service.    MF  Building the service then for the future is where Jason comes in, Jason Yaxley. As the director of the new Integrated Data Service, we've heard about potential, we've heard about the opportunity to do more in future. Tell us then about the Integrated Data Service, which promises to expand the amount of data available to researchers to speed up the delivery of it and to really produce a huge step-change or transformation in the ability of researchers to do this kind of work in the future. Is that a fair expectation?    Jason Yaxley  Hi Miles, pleased to be here. Yes, I think it's a very fair expectation. So I have the pleasure of being the programme director for the Integrated Data Programme, which will deliver the Integrated Data Service and the ONS is the lead delivery partner for all of government to deliver a transformation both in how government uses data, but also the underpinning technology that enables us to analyse and use that data much more quickly. And so that's a reason why we're one of the key enablers of the government's data strategy and why I view this very much as a transformation rather than just another big data lake where lots of government data goes and we can't really get into it. So, it's a really exciting opportunity. Were in the sort of middle stage of the programme where we have a service that is built and now we have to sort of grow it and expand it and get more data to really enhance its functionality, but it's a really exciting time. A really great job to have.    MF  And in terms of scale, what's the difference between IDS coming in, the Integrated Data Service, compared to the old, if I can put it that way, Secure Research Service?    JY  When it comes to the SRS, it is brilliant at what it does, but it's technology is starting to age and that is causing limitations. And I think what makes the Integrated Data Service sort of a step-change and perhaps unique across government falls into sort of four broad categories. There's the enabling infrastructure itself, which will be state of the art cloud-based, there is the data which will be much more friction free and will be quicker and easier to access data, use data, shar data. It will enable data visualisation in a way that's never been done before. And rather than having to do individual agreements to link one bit of data to a different bit of data, what we will have here is a service for people that will be scalable, repeatable, standardised, which makes it much much easier on a regular basis to link and index and then do research against much larger datasets much more quickly and produce faster results, which is going to be a huge benefit to the public good through the lens of better more informed and evidence-based policy decision making, that has much more statistical and analytical evidence that sits underneath it.   And so we're transforming both the data access itself and the technology that enables that, but also the sort of almost the cultural lens through which we work together. We share information to simplify it.  I really want to stress the IDS is keeping all the really good parts of SRS around the five safes, around the de-identification of data, protecting that data and ensuring that you know, public concerns about how government holds and uses data are entirely met.    MF  That's an obvious question isn't it, if this is happening much more widely on a much bigger scale, and how are those safeguards that were heard about from Bill going to be protected? How are they going to persist, and the same level of protection be provided?    JY   2023 is a big year for the programme, particularly March when we hope and we're aiming to receive our own Digital Economy Act accreditation in the same way that the SRS has. So we will carry forward the same safeguards that SRS has used so successfully, as I say around the five safes around, how users are accredited, but through technology and through the service that we operate, to streamline and simplify that, particularly for government users using government data. So this is about that cultural journey as well as that technological journey. Very central to what we're doing is the security of data, the protection of data, you know, we have to convince all of the Chief Technical Officers and all the data analysts across Whitehall that we are as safe and as secure as we could possibly be. So that they'll be comfortable with us having access to that data.    MF  Other potential areas that most UK government data will be made available will be accessible by researchers.    JY  And that's the end game. Absolutely. As I say, we're on a journey at this point. Again, 2023 is important to us. We've just brought in what we're calling super early adopters, which are strategic experienced government analysts from both Whitehall departments and the devolved administrations, particularly Welsh Government right now, and we have brought census 2021 data into the system very early. And so we're already working with government analysts to start to do early exploratory projects that unlocks the information and the power of the census data against certain government priorities, for example, around the economy or around energy, and particularly, we're working with Welsh Government to look at what is the impact of recent economic situation on the Welsh farming community and how can we analyse the industry against the information that we hold in the census data and other data sources to find outcomes of what's happened in say, the last 10 years between the two census datasets.    MF  So what happens next, what are the next steps on this? And particularly what's the message to researchers who think that they would like to be involved in this project?    JY  2023’s really big steps are, as I've just mentioned, DEA accreditation, we reach the next level of maturity for our functionality also in in March, which means in the rest of 2023, having had these two points in time, we’ll be in position to unlock the full sort of power of ideas, we will be wanting to encourage particularly more government researchers. Our aspiration is that every government professional analyst will be registered on and be able to use the service. We will accelerate our pipeline with Whitehall departments with data that we want to bring in. And over the life of the programme we will want to transition SRS itself, and its data and its users into IDS unlocking for those users as I say, the enabling technology of data visualisation, the speed and the pace, the scale. So, I at the moment feel that what we have is a huge warehouse with one corner that has data in it but the potential to fill it with as much data as we can in a way that is linked and matched and indexed. So that you can do much greater analytical research than hitherto has been possible. Just to illustrate that the way the way I like to think of it is there are a lot of people both in government and in academia that can do point to point linkage between dataset A, dataset B, and then run some research against it. And you can think of that perhaps as a ferry crossing a river from point A to point B on the other side, what helps visualise why IDs will be different is to think of us as a bridge and a road that goes over the river and so we can have multiple streams of traffic. We can have a much greater flow of information and research and all the agreements only have to be done once and then it's just repeatable from there. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to be working with the colleagues on the programme and colleagues across government and academia to deliver the transformation which we aim to complete by March 2025. So we still have some way to go to fully exploit all of the technology and get all the data in, but we're on our way.    MF  In the meantime however, there are a couple of examples already out there that listeners might care to check out for themselves if they haven't already. The first of which is the climate statistics data dashboard, creating a one-stop shop if you like for statistics on climate change related topics, bringing together data from around government, you can see it at climate-change.data.gov.uk and another one is the violence against women and girls data dashboard that's vawg.GSS-data.org.uk, which has been created as an important part of the government's 2021 tackling violence against women and girls strategy. And of course, the very popular and widely used COVID dashboard which continues to be available as well. So real living examples of the Integrated Data Service already serving the public benefit.   Becky, if I could bring you back in again, if we're able to deliver on this and the warehouse as Jason described, it becomes bursting with data from right across government sources, presumably then in the future, the kind of work you told us about your award winning work during the pandemic will become that much faster, much easier to execute.    Dr. Becky Arnold  Yes, it really, really would. And I also can't understate how much the integration value of it of having things in the same place and linked just saves so much time and try to track down what data is available and then trying to combine it all together is such a undertaking. Having that sort of delivered there, sort of knowing what is available in a much more accessible way. Being able to use it much more readily would vastly, vastly speed up the sort of research that I did. But it would also be hugely, hugely valuable.    MF  Perhaps some of those listening to this Becky might be surprised actually at how difficult it has been to access public data like this in the past, and that government departments haven't collaborated in making it available in a single place.    BA  One of the biggest difficulties in doing the research I did was trying to get access. Just trying to find what datasets are out there is also a really, really big time sink and the idea of these all being integrated together and much more findable in a way that they aren't now is really, really exciting because it means that if you know what data there is you can use the most appropriate data for what you're trying to use, rather than trying to cobble together what you know exists and you can get your hands on. So integrating this all together in one place where it's findable. It would be a huge, huge win for the sort of research like what I did - or what my team did a lot more accurately. Another factor on that as well is the linking. It is so difficult if you've got different datasets compiled for completely different purposes by different departments - trying to combine those together is really hard. Even if they are about the same sorts of people, the same sorts of things. So having datasets that are already integrated would be a huge, huge step forward in trying to use that data as effectively as possible for the sort of research to drive evidence-based decision making in policy, which I think is something that is so important, and it's something I'm really passionate about.    MF  Becky, thank you very much for joining us. And thanks also to Jason Yaxley, and to Bill South for taking us through this important topic.   I'm conscious that we've approached it largely through the perspective of researchers. And the whole issue of data ethics and how public good is assessed. It's something we've tackled in a previous podcast - do please listen to that and hear about the work of the data ethics committee as well because obviously, confidence in these kinds of initiatives, public trust in these kind of initiatives, depends very much on people understanding the ethical framework under which this work goes on. That's another big topic we will return to in the future, no doubt, and also track progress in the development, the ongoing development, of the Integrated Data Service and tracking the progress of some of the fantastic research projects that have already resulted from this kind of work and the potential ones very excitingly in future too, as well.   I’m Miles Fletcher, and thanks once again for listening to Statistically Speaking. You can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms.   Our producers at the ONS are Steve Milne and Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye.    ENDS 

National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, joins Miles in a slightly festive episode of Statistically Speaking, to look back on some of the highlights and challenges for the ONS in 2022 while gazing positively, but objectively, towards 2023.    TRANSCRIPT    MILES FLETCHER  Hello, and as another statistical year draws to an end you join us for a slightly festive episode of Statistically Speaking.   I'm Miles Fletcher and with me this time is the national statistician himself, Sir Ian Diamond. We're going to pick out some of the key stats from another momentous year. Talk about some of its highlights and the challenges faced by the Office for National Statistics. We’ll gaze positively, but objectively, into 2023 and Sir Ian will be answering some of the questions that you our listeners wanted us to ask.   Ian, welcome once again to statistically speaking.    IAN DIAMOND  First, thanks very much for that introduction. And can I offer festive greetings to all of your listeners?    MILES  Yes, it's come around again quickly, hasn't it? So much to talk about from the past year, but let's kick off with a very big number in every sense, and that's 59,597,542    IAN  ...is the population of England and Wales according to the census, and one, which I have to say is one of the greatest censuses that has ever been undertaken. And it's just an absolute thrill to commend my colleagues who have worked so hard to deliver it but also to every citizen of England and Wales who filled in those forms in 2021, and of course, those in Northern Ireland as well.    MILES  Now, you had to press the button, both on the decision to have that field operation go out in March 2021, against the backdrop of the pandemic, and then of course, to sign off on the results. How difficult were those decisions?    IAN  Well, I'm not going to say it was difficult Miles, I mean, it was a difficult decision, but if you surround yourself with all the information, so before we took the decision to go with a 2021 census, we looked at all the upsides, all the downsides. We measured the risks. We looked at the cost of delaying and we looked at the chance that we would get a decent count, and whether people were looking like they were now prepared to fill in forms, which have a whole set of risks. Was there an algorithm that told us what to do? I'm afraid there isn't an algorithm at the end of the day, I had to make a decision. I made that decision in collaboration with my colleagues. It was a decision we took together, and I think in every way it was the right decision. And it was a real privilege for me to work with the team in March and April, as we looked at the numbers, and for the first time, and I think it's a really important milestone, that for the very first time we shared our results with the local authorities. I have always believed that you need to involve the people on the ground to sense check the numbers and so for the first time ever, we invited local authorities to be part of the quality assurance process. So we contacted them under a nondisclosure agreement. You have access to the numbers, let's have a conversation and then we can co-create the numbers so that we all feel comfortable and local authorities to their great credit, really embraced this opportunity to co-create what was a great piece of work. We believe that helped, that the numbers that we were able to produce, we felt we had much more traction. And so it really was a national effort to produce those numbers. And I'm very proud of them.    MILES  In hindsight, and of course, it's easy to look at things in hindsight, but did you think it helped that essentially there was a captive audience?     IAN  Not at all. I completely disagree. I think the reason for the high numbers wasn't a captive audience. Let's remember that a very high proportion of the population were not able to lock down, they had to go out to work. The reason I think that we got high numbers was because of three reasons. Number one, engagement. A massive programme of engagement with different communities, which really, really, really meant that people in different communities of our country understood why we were asking, what the reasons were, in a way that perhaps hadn't happened before, and critically to say to people, if you give us your data we're not going away. We'll be back. And there's now a programme of going back and sharing those data for particular communities with them. So that's the first reason. The second reason was, I've always said that censuses are nine tenths logistics and 1/10 statistics and I felt that the logistics here were absolutely right. And moving to an online first model was incredibly important, it made it very easy for people to respond. You could respond on your way to work on your mobile phone. That's an awful lot easier than having someone knock on your door with a big form. And so I think that worked. And then a final piece was after the day having really good management information, which really enabled us to understand where our coverage was higher and lower, and then to target our field workers in a way that we've never been able to before. Historically when I did censuses, for example the 1981 census, every enumerate had a small area, they walked around, they found people within that area. But we were able to say right, we need more people in a particular area, less people in another area, so we were moving them around, maximising the resources and maximising the count.    MILES  Okay, so what do you think are the biggest takeaways on the data we've released so far?    IAN  I think some of the work around the ageing of our country is really important, but not just the ageing of our country because let's be honest, ageing is associated with demand for services. And what we show very clearly is a changing geography of ageing. Now, that's an ongoing situation. So if you look at the proportion of over 65s, it's a very different proportion of over 85s and so there is clearly a new internal migration which gives in some areas, for example, mid Wales and Cambridgeshire, a new demographic to think about for services over time. So here's a really interesting point about the geography of ageing, while noting that some of it is pretty traditional, the south coast of England remains a place with high levels of older people. Seaton in Devon, with the highest proportion of people over 90 in the country is an area which already knows that it has a high demand for services. Other places will be coming along, and I think that’s the first thing to say. The second thing I would note Miles is the changing demographic of where people were born. And certainly we are able to reflect some of that in the work but also again to look at the geography of where different people are living. And that's important. And also, for the first time ever, we have asked questions on veterans, and I think that was a really, really interesting piece of information. I must admit that the age distribution initially looks a little surprising, because for men, almost everybody is a veteran over the age of 80 because of national service, and that goes down, but we now have the ability to identify both the geography and the age distribution of veterans and it was noticeable that the highest proportions of veterans tended to be in places with military bases, Richmond Shire, in Yorkshire, which is near to Catterick or Portsmouth near the Navy areas. That says to us that they are obviously, and I'm not saying it's surprising, but people who have been in the military tend to end up staying around the areas where perhaps they have been based, but actually being able to do that and then following that up with a survey, a survey of veterans to understand their circumstances and the services they need, and also their families, I think is really super important that I have to say that that survey which went out after the results of the census were published, and we were able to launch them on the same day with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs Johnny Mercer has been an incredibly successful survey. Great response. And we're just in the process now of analysing those data. And that's something to look out for in the new year.    MILES  And plenty more census data still to come. Of course,    IAN  Well, yes. And of course, the data will be available now for an analysis by anyone. And that's really exciting,    MILES  Well worth pointing out as well. Okay, here's another big number for you. 11.1%     IAN  Is inflation.     MILES  That was the figure in October, it's recently dropped down to 10.7.    IAN  You don't really understand inflation until you actually get down to what's driving it and what the components are. And so, we spend an enormous amount of time looking at the components to understand them. So this drop to temporary 7% In the most recent data is driven by a reduction in fuel costs, with fuel prices going down, I mean it's still too expensive don't get me wrong but they're going down a bit, and at the same time that has been offset by increases in alcohol prices at hotels, restaurants, and pubs. And so all put together, yes it’s a drop, but not an enormous drop, and still a significant rise compared with the same month last year.    MILES  Now there's been a fascinating and very public debate over the cost of living of course, and particularly over the relevance and validity of headline inflation measures, CPI or CPIH. A preferred measure on the one hand, and on the other hand, the actual experience of people seeing the cost of their weekly shopping shooting up much faster than the official rate, which is just an average of course, would suggest.    IAN  I think it's an important point. I had a very good conversation with a number of influencers in this area. And I think it is important to recognise that what one is asked to do, and we are statutorily responsible for producing an inflation statistic that is an average at the end of the day, and it's based on a basket of goods, and that basket gets changed every year to reflect buying patterns. So with a pandemic, we were more relaxed Miles and you would be sitting opposite me just wearing a jumper instead of a three-piece suit, it means that we took men's suits out of the basket this year, but that's an average. The point that people have asked is does that average reflect what's going up for all groups of society? What about those people who are at the poorer end of society and whose budget only allows them to buy the least priced goods and that's why we put together a least price index and one that's based on what might be called the value goods that Supermarkets sell. And if we look at those we found that the average price there was not unlike the overall inflation, but again, an enormous amount of heterogeneity on the various prices. The highest increase in the most recent products was for vegetable oil, of course, driven by the issues associated with Russia and Ukraine and the difficulties of the Ukrainian farms which drive so much of that area. On the other hand, beef mince and orange juice went down relatively. So there was heterogeneity, inflation was high, but let me be very clear, not unlike the overall inflation in the country as a whole on the average.    MILES  The important point here being that everyone's rate of inflation, of course is slightly different and we have a means now of allowing people to find out exactly what their personal rate is don’t we.    IAN  For those people who want to have a really close look at their budget, the personal inflation calculator which people can use and that personal inflation calculator has been massively used. We had a very good partnership with the media - BBC, The Guardian - for it to be widely available. And indeed, in the first 24 hours or so of it being available on the BBC website, over a million people used it - over a million people accessing ONS data.    MILES  And you can find that out of course by visiting ons.gov.uk and calculate your own personal rate of inflation there.    Of course, when we think about money, we inevitably think about work and that brings us on to the figures around the labour market. And one rather sombre area of the Labour Force Survey that's been the focus of again, a lot of attention this year, is the increasing number of people deemed to be economically inactive, perhaps very often because of long term sickness. Now, what do you make of that?    IAN  Economically inactive is not just people who are on sick, I mean there has been a steady move initially from those over age 50 to inactivity, and that means that they are reporting that they are not in work, nor are they looking for work. We've called it a bit of a flourish, that flight from the labour force of the over 50s is a real trend and a real worry for the economy, given the skills that those people hold, and we've done two surveys of the over 50s to understand why they have left the labour force and what might tempt them back in. 500,000 over 50s leaving the labour force, though it's only a very rough indicator, if you don't replace them somehow, and with every 100,000 people being around 0.1 of GDP full time equivalents, and that's 0.5 on the GDP. It's as simple as that. The other point I would make that I think is important is another real concern for the labour force. Just in the last few weeks we have started to see just a hint of an increase in inactivity amongst the 16 to 24s. That is important because if it were to continue it is normally an indicator of challenges in the labour force and when 16 to 24s are saying I don't have a job and I'm looking for one it tends to be because there isn't one around. And so I do think that there is an issue again for us to keep a laser focus on these numbers as we go into 2023.    MILES  Okay, so we've mentioned GDP and of course, there's been a lot of focus again on the level of GDP and whether the economy is in so called recession or expanding or whatever. Let's not get into that in any great detail now, but it's worth pointing out that alongside GDP, the ONS has been trying for some time now to broaden its focus on what matters in terms of wellbeing, both socially and economically. And to produce a more comprehensive picture of what's going on, aside from that very raw, basic GDP estimate. Can you tell us a little bit about what's developed on that front this year?    IAN  I think that's a really interesting point. We, as other parts of the world’s national statistical institutes have been saying, well, actually, there is much more to our gross domestic product than just what comes strictly from the economy. And so we have been working on the environment and natural capital and building that into our overall estimates. And we're now also working on some things that I have been thinking about for a long time and I'm very excited that we are going to be able to work on that. And that is to look at in many ways at the human capital that we have, and how that is being effectively used. If you are spending six hours a day, shall we say, caring for your elderly parent and perhaps your grandchildren, then are you being productive or not? And of course, the answer is you're being incredibly productive. Or if you are, as a neighbour of mine is, working a couple of evenings or a couple of afternoons a week at a homeless shelter in Somerset, then are you being productive in that volunteering? 100% yes. And so I think it is important that we build these extra pieces in now. Is this point about human capital, is this new? Well, the great, famous Nobel Prize winner Richard Stone wrote in his Nobel lecture about this, I made some suggestions, but at that time I would submit that it was actually quite hard to build the models in the way that one would want to. One could do the algebra, but it would kind of drop out after a while. Whereas now with numerical estimation, we can really move forward in an effective way and I'm looking forward to 2023 being a year when we really push forward with those models, and really build the human capital. And most importantly, alongside that, the wellbeing. Wellbeing is a much more complex indicator, and we have a consultation out at the moment which I see coming into fruition in 2023 around the measurement of our wellbeing. We talk about the increasing proportion of elderly and I think it is also important to think about that in the context of how are people ageing. Now, let me just give you a statistic, Miles. If I looked in 1951 at the age at which 1% of men had a probability of dying, that'd be about 50. If I looked at it now, it’s 65. So 65 is the new 50. And you can look at things in all kinds of ways like that, but that original idea is that of the great demographer James Vaupel. And this 65 is the new 50 is absolutely brilliant, but, and this is the nub of this, it needs to be healthy ageing. It comes back to that point about inactivity, what are we doing to enable people to feel that they can age healthily and therefore be productive whether that is through traditional paid employment or through other issues such as volunteering, that's something we will be spending a lot of time over the next little while estimating.    MILES  You mentioned ageing and on the topic of health in 2022, the introduction of what some may view as the GDP of health and that is the Health Index for England. Another important piece of work that's been going on here.    IAN  What the Health Index allows us to do is to get down to the local levels and we've got a pilot with colleagues in Northumberland, Director of Public Health up there to go down to sub local areas. And I think the important thing to recognise is the geographical difference here in levels of health. It's interesting to look at the national level, we need to look at the geography, expectations of life at birth for men in Glasgow City are 14 or 15 is less than expectations of life for men in places like Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, you know, that's a real issue. When I worked in Scotland, the Director of Public Health for Grampian region put out some statistics which showed within Aberdeen the difference between the two wards, probably seven or eight miles apart was 16, a full 16 years. Those are the kinds of differentials that I think we need to understand more, we would all agree it is a priority to reduce those inequalities in health. And it seems to me there is a challenge for us to understand that and to reduce those inequalities.    MILES  Okay, so we've talked about health, personal wellbeing, economic wellbeing as well. Now there's an additional element of attention for the ONS now, and that's been the environment and particularly monitoring progress towards net zero emissions by 2050 and to help with that ONS has contributed to the official climate change portal, which you can view at climate-change.data.gov.uk. Here's a statistic from that, in 2021 84% of our energy still came from non-renewable sources.    IAN  And that's what we need to continue to measure. And clearly the focus on energy and energy supply has increased this year as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. And we over the next while need to make sure that we have very accurate data on sources of energy. And our job is to monitor that in an effective and efficient way. And we will do that.    MILES  Now, we mentioned to some of our podcast listeners, we'd be speaking to you today and asked them to come up with their own questions on topics they'd like to put to you.   So let's kick off with this one from Professor Athina Vlachantoni, from the University of Southampton no less, who asks: What's the most intriguing number or statistic you've come across during your time as national statistician?    IAN  One of the most interesting I would have to say, was the very first number that we got from the COVID infection survey, because we had to look at it very, very, very carefully, to make sure going back to an individual level, to look at the amount of virus in each positive case, so that we were sure that we did not have a high number of false positives. And what that showed, and when we linked it in with our questions about symptoms, was the number of asymptomatic cases. And I found that really, really interesting. On a lighter note, the data that we get from credit card and debit card sales. On July 21, I think it was in 2021, “Freedom Day” as it was called, when people were able to go to the pub we saw a spike in sales in pubs but we were also able to identify whether those sales were in person or online. We've been monitoring online sales during the pandemic very carefully. And I was really surprised to see a spike in sales in pubs with the person not present. I was wondering whether there were people down the street, you know, with very long straws. Of course, what I hadn't realised is that in some pubs now, you can get an app for your beer and it arrives as if by magic at your table. And so it was a learning experience for me that it was possible for large numbers of people to enjoy a drink, while apparently not being at the pub.    MILES  Well, that's a lovely example of fast digital data contributing towards incredible insight, which the ONS is now able to access. But actually it leads nicely on to our next question which comes from Sam Smith, from Cambridge, who asks: Hhat are the longer-term opportunities and threats to the public from the use of safe settings and the Integrated Data Service? Now that's a question that’s essentially about security and the ethical use of data for the public good.    IAN  Sam, that's a really super question and something that we're absolutely passionate about. Firstly, using data positively on the lives of our fellow citizens is what we're here for, and therefore we recognise at all times that we use data with the implicit permission of the public. So the first answer I would say to Sam is that we are absolutely committed to public engagement, transparency to make sure people know what we're doing, how we're doing it. And we don't just talk about data, but what are we going to use it for, and how is it going to be used and can you find out how it has been used. These are really, really important questions and public engagement and involving the public in our decision making is important. Secondly, when we build something like the Integrated Data Service, we are very, very careful about the security and we work very closely with the top security people across government to make sure that we have the highest levels of security so that all the data doesn't need to be in one place. We are able to bring the data we need from different places so that we're not, if you like, moving large amounts of data around and forming data lakes, that is not what we do. Thirdly, we are very, very careful about how people can use the data and how they can access the results. So we work very carefully to make sure that those results have no way for people to impact on the privacy and our data can only be used by approved people and the projects on which they work on have to go through an ethical committee and have to go through a research approvals panel. We call this process “the 5 safes” and we believe that that does enable us to be able to look any member of the public in the eye and say that we are taking every precaution with your data, but at the same time, the proof of the pudding has to be in the eating and the public have to be able to see, I would argue, how those data have been used and how there are real concrete examples of how the lives of them or their fellow citizens have been improved by the use of linked administrative data.    MILES  Final question. This comes from Jennifer Boag from Scotland - clue there - and she asks: Do you have confidence that the work being done to retrieve Scotland’s census will give us reliable UK wide statistics, so that Scotland's data will be comparable with the rest of the UK?      IAN  Well, thanks, Jennifer, for that. A census is a process and we are seeing that our colleagues in Scotland working on the Census have now got the ability to use the data they collected as well as the coverage survey, and now the administrative data, to be able to bring those three sources together into a reliable estimate of the population. I would just like to thank Professor James Brown and the international steering group for the very hard work that they've been putting in providing very strong steers on what should we do. And my position at the moment is that we can expect, if everything goes well, to see some reliable Scottish data during 2023. And we at the ONS are working extremely hard to make sure that we can roll forward our data in a way that means that we will have the 22 best estimates for the whole of the UK which we can put our hand on heart and say that we trust. We're not there yet. I believe we can get there. And I will do everything in my power to ensure that we do.    MILES  Data from Scotland on the way then, and more data from England and Wales still to come, but also in 2023 a decision on whether the UK Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland perhaps will have censuses in future?    IAN  Well not a decision on all four because undertaking a census isn't independent that Scotland and Northern Ireland will take their own view, as will Wales. Currently we do the census for Wales with our colleagues in Wales, but at the end of the day it is a Welsh Government decision for that to happen. We in the ONS will be making a recommendation to our board and through them a recommendation to Parliament as to whether we believe that we can produce regular population estimates and the multivariate data that comes with them in a way that means that we will not have need to have another census in 2031. I mean, I would say that we're able to do this and there's an enormous amount of work going on. And that's a real major breakthrough because while I'm passionate about censuses and a census is an incredibly beautiful and wonderful thing, I would have to say that it is out of date as soon as you've done it, and therefore being able to have regular estimates would be a breakthrough rather than simply rolling forward and we can't hide from the fact that as you roll forward and you get further rolling forward, it becomes much more difficult at the local area level to make those estimates. And so I am really excited about that decision and will be consulting during 2023 on where we have got to, which of course also brought about a statutory responsibility to see whether we can make local estimates of average income, and we will continue to look at that as well. So I think it's an exciting 2023 with regard to the future of the census.   Miles, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you very much, and I look forward to another opportunity to join this podcast in the future. Thank you.    MILES   Well, that's it for another episode of Statistically Speaking and if you're one of the people who collectively browsed the ONS website 21,809 times on Christmas Day last year, rest assured that this year you'll be able to access every single one of our podcasts from 2022 directly from the homepage now on the ONS website.   And as always, you can subscribe to future episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms. Do also please follow us on the @ONSfocus Twitter feed.   I'm Miles Fletcher and from myself, our producer Steve Milne, and the whole of the Office for National Statistics, have a very Merry Christmas.    ENDS 

Miles is joined by colleagues from the Health and Life Events team to explore how data is good for our health. Within the diagnosis: the Health Index, dubbed “the GDP of health”; the impacts of Covid-19 as well as an ageing society; and the increasing importance of linking data from numerous sources to generate complex insights that inform decision-making.    TRANSCRIPT    MILES FLETCHER  Welcome again to Statistically Speaking the Office for National Statistics podcast. This time we're taking the pulse of the nation's health and exploring the role of public data in making it better. Of course, we would say that statistics are good for you. We recommend at least five a day, but more seriously, what do the ONS figures say about the state of our health now? And what are we doing to create new and better statistical insights to support a healthier population in future?   With us to examine all are ONS colleagues, Julie Stanborough, Deputy Director of Health and Life Events, Neil Bannister, Assistant Deputy Director of Health Analysis and, later in the podcast, Jonny Tinsley, Head of Health and Life Events Data Transformation.   Julie to start with you. The World Health Organisation defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Now, the ONS has begun a major project that seeks to capture the key elements of that in one place and to a certain extent in one single number. Can explain what that is, and what it's all about?    JULIE STANBOROUGH  Yes, so that will be the Health Index, and as you say, it is kind of regarded as the GDP of health. And at its simplest, it allows the health of England and local authorities to be tracked over time, which allows greater understanding of the relationships between the drivers of health and health outcomes. So the index starts in England in 2015. And we've got data up to 2019, which is available online, but we're going to be publishing 2020 figures very shortly.    MF  So tell us about the nuts and bolts, what are the data sources here and how have they been put together?    JS  We've got a huge number of different data sources that go into the Health Index. We've grouped them into three different themes, that we have healthy people, healthy lives and healthy places. And we use data sources from within ONS, but also from across government, and more broadly, to give that really in-depth breadth of all the data that goes into health.    MF  What sort of factors, what sort of elements are we looking at? People living without serious health conditions?    JS  Yeah, so it's a whole range of things. For example, looking at child poverty through to access to green spaces, life expectancy, a whole range of different factors which contribute to whether a particular area is deemed to have high health index or a low health index.    MF  Is there particular value - because you can understand wanting to understand disparities at local level and we'll talk about that a bit a bit later - but boiling it down to a single reading, a GDP. That's a very ambitious thing. How useful, how relevant, is that figure going to be? Is it something that the future will look to us regularly and take as seriously as a big number like GDP?    JS  I'd really hope so. And I think because the complexity of health is so complex, if we can boil it down to one number and be able to track that over time, at a national level, or at a local level, that really helps people understand what's going on and helps them to engage, but equally because it has all the different data sources in there, it allows those policy makers in local authorities to be able to go into that data and explore what really is happening in their particular area.    MF  More than simply measuring the outputs or successes of the health services, it's about understanding a much wider range of factors as well as the environment in which people live and their socio-economic position as well.    JS  That's right. I mean, there are so many different aspects to it. And that's why the Health Index has so many different data sources in there. But because of that complexity, it makes it really difficult for people to understand what they should be doing to improve the health in their areas. So you need that breadth, but then the ability to aggregate it up into a single number helps with the accessibility.     MF  So the index will provide this big reading of this multi factor estimate of health but perhaps it'll be the case that it isn't so much what the index says at any given time, but how it changes over time, that'll be its real value.    JS  That's right. And it's being able to track that at a national level. And at a local level. We're going to be publishing 2020 results, but we're going to have to be quite careful with those results because it'd be the first year with the pandemic and so we'd expect to be seeing some changes as a result of the pandemic. But equally, some of the data collections will have changed as a result of not being able to interview people in the same way because of lockdown. So we're going to have to monitor that data over 2020 / 2021 and further to really see the impact of the pandemic.    MF  And provide also perhaps some measure of people's changing economic circumstances at a time when there's so much concern obviously around the cost of living.   In the meantime, because this project the Health Index is still in its relative infancy of course we have a wealth of other data already that the ONS generates and brings in from elsewhere and works with. Of course the number one indicator of a nation's health is our life expectancy - how long we might be expected to survive. Tell us what's been happening - the broad picture - as far as life expectancy is concerned.    JS  Life expectancy, if I just explain what that is, is a statistical measure which estimates the average number of years a person can expect to live. So male life expectancy at birth in the United Kingdom for the years 2018 to 2020 was 79 years, and that compared to 83 years for females. And during the past two decades life expectancy has grown, but much faster growth appeared in the naughties, and during the 2010s. We've seen that life expectancy pretty much slow right down and flatten.    MF  As well as this obviously the key measure of life expectancy. There's another important dimension here and this is particularly relevant if we're talking about health and that of course is healthy life expectancy because it's all very well to be alive, but if you have not got a great quality of life, well that brings all sorts of other issues and it brings problems for the health service as well of course. Tell us about healthy life expectancy. What is that as a statistic, how is that measured? What are the characteristics that inform healthy life expectancy?     JS  It's slightly different to life expectancy. Healthy life expectancy is a measure of the average number of years someone can expect to live in good health or free from limiting illness, and in 2018 to 2020 male healthy life expectancy at birth in the UK was 63 years, which meant that you had 16 years of life in not good health. In contrast for females, they had 64 years of healthy life expectancy, which meant that they had 19 years of life in not good health.    MF  That's fascinating and obviously begs the question, has that period of healthy life expectancy been going up in line with overall life expectancy, or have people simply been living longer in poor health?     JS  Yeah, so between 2011/13 and 2018/2020, both males and females, there was no improvement in health and life expectancy.    MF  That goes some way to explaining some of the current pressures on the National Health Service.    JS  That's right. I mean, if you've got more people that aren't in good health and have limiting conditions that's going to have increasing pressure on our health services and our GP services.    MF  And it does mean also that people are dying from different things, and they might have died younger from different conditions. They're living longer, but perhaps in poorer and poorer health in many cases, and in the end, actually dying from different causes. What are the data saying?    JS  So there's a range of different factors which are associated with a healthy life expectancy, and things that you'd probably think yourself. So when we looked at areas across the country with the lowest healthy life expectancy, 29% of males aged 30 to 49 smoked compared to just 17% of those that were in the highest healthy life expectancy areas. So smoking is clearly one of the drivers. We've also looked at whether people are overweight, and more than one in eight children in the lowest healthy life expectancy areas became overweight between entering primary school and starting secondary school. In contrast, those in the highest healthy life expectancy areas, it was just one in every 10. So there's a number of different factors there that we can see are driving it.    MF  If any justification was needed on why public health campaigns tend to concentrate on issues like obesity and smoking that's starkly revealed in the numbers.   So that's the big picture. That's what's happening at a national level. But tell us about the differences from place to place because the local variations are quite significant too, aren’t they?    JS  That's right. So to commit those geographical variations, Ribble Valley in Lancashire is ranked the healthiest out of 307 local authority areas in England, and that's using the Health Index.  MF  And the least healthy?  JS  So we do have all those rankings, but we do try to not think about the scores in a sort of ranking capacity. The whole point of having this information put out there is for local authorities to be able to compare themselves with similar local authorities or their nearest neighbour and see how different aspects of health are given the different policy initiatives that they're implementing in their local areas.    MF  Because lo and behold, whenever these league tables – and I do emphasise that we don't claim them to be league tables, they're often seen as such - when they appear of course, people want to know where is top. Whereas, surprise surprise, normally it goes with socio-economic status doesn't it. To put it bluntly, the better off areas see the highest life expectancy and healthy life expectancy?    JS  Yes, that's right. And even for those areas, you'd want them to be perhaps comparing themselves to other similar areas with the same sort of socio demographics and then to think about where different aspects of, whether it's smoking prevalence or childhood obesity, how are those different areas responding, what are the policies that they're putting in place to try and improve those statistics.    MF  Because again, it's not a matter of stating the obvious, which is self-evident, isn't it? Health outcomes tend to be better in more prosperous areas. This has been well known for some time, although we opened a local paper the other day writing up some of these numbers and saying certain towns in the West Midlands have been named and shamed as having the worst health locally. This is emphatically not about naming and shaming areas, neither is it about stating the obvious. As you say it's about informing better health outcomes, so resources can be better targeted.    JS  That's right. I was actually looking at a Coventry Marmot city review, and they have been using a whole range of different public health measures to try and improve the outcomes in that area. And one of the key measures they use is healthy life expectancy. They're comparing the outcomes after a number of years in their area to what's been going on nationally. So it's helping them benchmark the initiatives that they've been putting in place    MF  As with the overall Health Index itself, it sets the standard doesn't it. Puts in numbers what is clearly self-evident, but useful numbers because they give you that sense of the scale of the issue at the local level. That's at least as far as England is concerned, but also we've been working with the devolved administrations around the United Kingdom as well, and what do we know about that picture?    JS  So on the Health Index, that's actually one of the areas that we were looking to expand. So the Health Index at the moment covers England – we would really like to develop them for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and then create a UK wide one as well. So that's something that we're looking to develop in the future.    MF  That's a work in progress, and a ‘watch this space’ then for forthcoming publications, both of the Health Index and of data being compared across the UK as well.    So Neil, people are living longer, but with that experiencing a whole range of health conditions. Tell us what we're picking up in the data and what's changing.    NEIL BANNISTER  That’s right Miles. So age is a very big important social determinant for health and an ageing society places a big burden on the health and social care systems in the country. Recent Census analysis from the 2021 Census showed that nearly one in five people in England and Wales was over 65 now, with the fastest increase happening in the 85 plus age group. So there really is a fundamental kind of growth in the ageing population, and that leads to increases in certain disease types. So for example, we know that being in an elderly age group you can experience being more disabled and having more multiple chronic and complex health conditions as well as there being an increase in dementia and Alzheimer's disease. So for example, with dementia, we know that around about 900,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed with dementia and by 2025 it is expected to reach around about 1 million people in the UK. In terms of how we look at it from our data within ONS, we know that 12.5% of all deaths that we record are caused by dementia and Alzheimer's, and it is the leading cause of death in age groups over 80 plus within England and Wales.  MF  That is a relatively recent development.   NB  That's right. So that's happened really over the last three to five years, we've seen this increase in the dementia and Alzheimer's as a leading cause of death in England and Wales.    MF  And is the rate of increase showing any sign of abating?     NB  Well, if you take away the COVID pandemic period, no, it doesn't. It looks like it's actually on track to continue to be the leading cause of death and with the new figures that we have in from Census showing there is an ageing population, and the age is increasing, we would expect there to be a continued increase in the number of deaths from dementia and Alzheimer's and, as I said, the number of diagnoses as well.    MF  Yes, that's a stark finding and something you'd suspect we're going to be hearing quite a lot more about.    NB  It's not just within the UK that this is occurring though. When you look across other economically developed countries. So looking at the data from the OECD, for example, we can see that Japan, Italy and Greece - these are countries with well-known elderly populations - they have a very high prevalence of dementia. The UK out of the 44 OECD countries UK is 15th highest in terms of the prevalence of dementia, which is equivalent to where Denmark is as well in terms of comparability.    MF  And that speaks loudly to some of the challenges the health system is going to face in future, and the social care sector as well, which is already under pressure in some respects. Tell us about the potential impacts there, what are we seeing?    NB  What we found during the pandemic is that there are big gaps in data around social care statistics and being able to understand that population within our society and that group in society.    MF  Is that because the sector is diverse, and it's sprawling and it's uncertain and in places it's quite informal?    NB  Absolutely. There are different types of social care. There's social care that happens within care residences, and there's also social care that happens within the home. There’s a big private industry there as well as the public sector being involved. And trying to pull together information across that diverse and complex landscape is very difficult.    MF  What are we doing to try and close some of those gaps?    NB  So we're working very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care. They have a large programme of work to try and collate data and improve data collections across the piece. What we've been doing, we've been looking at particular areas. So we're looking at trying to understand more about self-funders - individuals who fund their own social care, as opposed to those who have the state to fund it for them. And other areas of what we're doing is to look also at the workforce in social care, which is very hard to track over time and to understand the size and scale of that workforce. So that's another area of work that we're doing.    MF  And this is just part of a much wider body of work going on across the ONS to try and shed new light on health inequalities in particular.    NB  Yes, that's right. So we are going to be using the Census, the 2021 census data, to really look in more detail at social care once that data becomes available. But what we have been able to do though, during the COVID pandemic, is use the 2011 census data to link to other sources to really understand how, for example, the COVID pandemic had impacts across a number of different groups in society. We were able to produce statistics for the first time looking at the impact that COVID had on particular ethnic groups, on religious groups, and on the disabled groups in society.    MF  And what did we discover about the unequal impacts of COVID?     NB  Yeah, so when we're looking at ethnicity for example, since the start of the period where the Omicron variant was more prominent, we found that the Bangladeshi ethnic group of males had the highest rate of death of COVID-19, as opposed to the white British group. And we also found that for females, the Pakistani ethnic group had the highest rate of death involving COVID-19, which is 2.5 times higher than that of the white British group    MF  On the topic of ethnicity, was it factors such as the nature of the occupations undertaken by those groups, or perhaps socio-economic status, living conditions and so forth? Or was there something, by the very nature of their ethnicity, that was actually contributing towards higher mortality? Have we got to the bottom of that?    NB  It's very hard to know that, Miles. What we've done is some complicated modelling to understand, and we've taken into account certain social demographic groups and economic factors, but we still do find that certain ethnic groups have a higher rate of death, even when taking into account those factors. Things that it could be, but we don't know the detail yet, could maybe be how people in those ethnic groups live in terms of having multi-generational households, for example, and maybe that was a contributing factor, but to understand that in more detail much more work is needed to be done.    MF  Another area where research remains in progress. And also more recently, we've gone into partnership with one of the world's great philanthropic organisations to try and uncover what's going on behind some of these inequalities.    NB  That's correct. So there's a piece of work that we're doing working with the Wellcome Trust and the Race Equality Foundation. And what we're trying to do is to understand that there are different sources of ethnicity data within the health system and also with our Census data as well. What we know is that there are different qualities of how that data is recorded. What we're doing with the Wellcome Trust is to really understand the quality of the data across the different sources so we can provide a better understanding of the analysis that can be done with those data sources, which is really important as its data itself, which is a fundamental building block of any analysis that we can undertake. And the quality of that.    MF  It's quite hard to disentangle the effects of the pandemic at the moment, and it's probably worth discussing those. Are we in a position yet to know how life expectancy has been affected by COVID?    NB  At the moment, we have some indication. So the last publication we produced for healthy life expectancy covered the period of 2018 to 2020, which has a period of a COVID pandemic within that analysis, and that did show that there has been a drop in healthy life expectancy both in England, Wales and Scotland. But what we don't know for certain yet is the full impact of that because we haven't had the data to analyse for the entire pandemic period. And that's work that's ongoing within the office.    MF  So we will in due course then be able to get a much better understanding to what extent life expectancy might have been impacted by long COVID. But in the meantime, other ONS data suggest that a lot of people at least say or think they are suffering long term effects from it.    JULIE STANBOROUGH  That's right. We estimate over 2 million people in the population are experiencing long COVID. And it is self-reported long COVID. So we collect this data from the COVID Infection Survey, which was started at the beginning of the pandemic and people are reporting whether they're experiencing a whole range of different symptoms, which are associated with long COVID. And we've been monitoring that on a monthly basis to see whether those numbers have been increasing or decreasing and which types of people in the population are more likely to be experiencing long COVID.   MF  And what’s been the pattern of those numbers?  JS  It’s actually been broadly stable, a slight upward trend but broadly stable over time, and you would hope that over time it will start to drop down, but we're not in that situation at the moment.    MF  So the data at the moment is seeming to suggest that - so obviously, we know a lot of people have been infected - a lot of people seem to be suffering symptoms for a protracted period afterwards, but at least as far as the data are concerned, they will tend to imply a lot of those people are getting better.    JS  So we measure whether people are experiencing long COVID after a set number of weeks. So there's a significant proportion of people that still experiencing long COVID At least 12 months after their first infection – it is a small group but it is a significant number of people. But of course it has impacts on their ability to go about their day to day lives. Look after family, go to work, study. So it does have a significant impact on people   MF  And what sort of effects are they reporting?   JS  So it can be a range of things from fatigue, breathing difficulties to perhaps more severe symptoms. So a whole range of different symptoms.     MF  What further analysis are we doing on the impacts of COVID generally? We've explored differences in ethnicity, other characteristics as well. Tell us a little about that work and what’s up next for this programme of research.    JS  As you say, yes, we've done a whole range of different analysis to support the COVID pandemic. A lot of the analysis that we have produced has gone into the COVID Insights tool, which is on the ONS website. And that brings together a range of different data and analysis around hospitalizations, infections and deaths but also tries to put it into a sort of societal context, in terms of wellbeing, and employment as well. It's actually one of the most looked at on the ONS site.    MF  So even though the pandemic subsides - as at least we hope it will - a lot of work will continue to assess its full impact.    JS  That's right. It will be trying to understand in more depth what happened during the pandemic as well as monitoring the long-term effects, either on employment or in terms of people experiencing long COVID.    MF  The ability to link data to provide complex insights, of course, is such an important area of research at the moment.   And that brings us to Jonny Tinsley. Jonny this is very much your area of expertise.   And with that in mind, tell us about the Public Health Data Asset. What is that and how does that bring together data in that very useful way?    JONNY TINSLEY  During the pandemic data became incredibly important to understand what was going on and a lot of data sources in the health space exist. The NHS collects an awful lot of information about people and a lot of other organisations produce analysis, including the NHS themselves of that data. But one of the things that is unique to ONS is its access to non-health data and in particular, the Census data. By bringing in some of that health data from the NHS, which we’re able to do for statistical purposes, we were then able to link that with the Census 2011 data and also our mortality data and create what we call the Public Health Data Asset. And what that effectively gives us is a huge cohort of people that were here in 2011, at the Census and then in combination with that mortality and health data able to analyse, giving it such a huge cohort of people. It allows us to have quite a lot of power and the statistics we can produce and pick up. Some of the differences that Neil was talking about actually, because the Census data includes things like ethnicity, religion, and disability status. We're able then to look at differences across those groups for things like COVID-19 mortality.    MF  So we can track essentially, as I understand it, we can track what's happened to individuals' health over that period of time, from the information supplied to Census and from their interactions with the NHS and other public services?    JT  To give a specific example, what we can do is for these different groups, so the Census effectively allows us to separate out the groups. For example, it shows that these people are of this ethnicity whereas these people are of this ethnicity, and then for those groups we will then know which people have died and when and what was the cause, in particular during the pandemic obviously, whether that cause was COVID-19. And then the main thing the health data has allowed us to do so far is look for what we would call comorbidities. So who has pre-existing conditions that put them at risk of poor outcomes from conditions such as COVID-19 in this particular case,    MF  And that will help the health services to be more predictive of the sort of conditions people are likely to face?    JT  Yes, to a degree. So some of that was already known. But what it allows us to do is if a particular ethnic group tends to suffer from certain conditions more than another, by taking those co-morbidities into account, we can do what we would probably, in layman's terms, call ‘control’ for them in the models, and therefore effectively discount them. And if any differences still remain after that, between different ethnic groups, then something else must be going on. And as Neil says, one factor for example could be the multi-generational households impacting how likely it is for transmission to happen.    MF  And as well as differences by ethnicity and other characteristics it allows this to be done at a very, very local level as well, because of the sheer scale of these databases.     JT  From a data point of view, that's a really interesting question, because we have the COVID Infection Study, which Julie mentioned earlier, and whenever we do a survey we try and make it as representative as possible. So obviously it's not everyone. It might still be several hundred thousand people, as it is with the COVID infection study, but ideally it's made to be as representative of the population as possible, such that if 2% of the sample are infected with COVID-19 that week, it probably means that 2% of the whole population of England and Wales also are. But one of the downsides to doing a survey is even if you have a large number of participants, the statistics you're able to produce are at a really low level, this isn't as good because the number of people you have available in a small area that are actually in your study can be really, really small. And it can also make it more difficult to pick up these differences between groups, such as ethnic groups. Whereas when you've got the Census data, because you've got a much larger sample of people in your study, it gives you more statistical power and you can pick up the differences more easily, and produce lower-level statistics more easily. The downside, because there's always upsides and downsides when it comes to data quality, is that the 2011 Census data is now somewhat out of date. And the cohort, the kind of study population we had available to us, by definition excluded anyone who's been born since 2011, and anyone who's immigrated to the country since 2011. Because you know, they weren't here for us to pick up in the Census in 2011. So there's some work we've done to think about just how representative what we're calling the Public Health Data Asset is in terms of who is included and who isn't, compared to the people that are actually here in the country right now and have been during the pandemic, if that makes sense.    MF  Potentially, this is an incredibly valuable resource, but primarily who is it for and what are they going to use it for?    JT  To an extent they were for the general public of course, but also important stakeholders - decision makers during the pandemic like the scientific advisory group for emergencies (SAGE). Listeners will probably be familiar with people like Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and so these sorts of decision makers were finding everything we were doing really useful and at times even commissioning us to produce particular statistics or analysis using this really powerful dataset that we had available to us.   I mean, one aspect of this that I think is really important to talk about is data protection, confidentiality and kind of ethical uses. So to be clear that we take our responsibilities when it comes to the Census data really seriously and as many people know, we don't release Census data until 100 years after it's been collected. And when we get in other data for statistics that's of a sensitive nature, like the health data, we have all sorts of processes in place to secure that in our secure data systems and ensure that only highly trained security cleared staff can access it. So primarily, we're talking about substantive ONS employees who are specially trained using this data for statistical purposes. We will then use the data to produce the statistics that our users are telling us they need the most.    MF  Yes, it's well worth emphasising the data protection side there because obviously we are talking about vast amounts of highly sensitive data. And if anyone's interested in finding out more about how we approach those issues at the ONS, do please have a listen to our podcast on data ethics, where we explore that topic in some detail.   Overall then, a lot of ground-breaking work going on, a lot of new data coming in and we have to say that it has actually been picking up some prestigious awards.    JT  That's right Miles. Some of the work we've talked about has won a number of awards, probably the most prestigious being the RSS Campion award for official statistics.    MF  After hearing a lot of really quite sombre detail over the course of our conversation today, it's good perhaps to end on a relatively upbeat note. At least people can be assured that so much work, so much research, is going on to try and anticipate some of these problems before they manifest fully. And we hope of course to contribute to improving health outcomes over the longer term.   So that's it for this episode of Statistically Speaking, I'm Miles Fletcher. Thanks very much to our guests Julie Stanborough, Neil Bannister and Jonny Tinsley. Thanks very much to you for listening once again.  You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all other major podcast platforms. Thanks again to our producer at the ONS Steve Milne for this episode and, until next time, goodbye.    ENDS 

In this episode of Statistically Speaking Miles is helped with his enquiries by Meghan Elkin and Billy Gazard from the Office for National Statistics, as he investigates how we use data to get valuable insights into the impact of crime on modern society. Along the way he debunks common misconceptions; learns how the nature of crime continues to evolve; and uncovers the work being done behind-the-scenes to make crime data more inclusive.   TRANSCRIPT   MILES FLETCHER  Hello, and welcome again to ‘Statistically Speaking’ the Office for National Statistics podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher and in this episode, we're going to be investigating crime.   What is the statistical evidence that despite the impression you might have got from the media, overall crime in England and Wales has actually been falling? Or is it the case that the nature of crime has simply changed and we're more likely these days to be targeted online than in the streets, and what in any case is the value of understanding the overall level of crime when that term captures such a wide and varied range of social ills and harms?   Helping us with our enquiries today are Meghan Elkin, head of the ONS centre for crime and justice, and Billy Gazard head of acquisitive crime and stakeholder engagement.   Meghan, so much to talk about in the many and varied crime figures that ONS produces, but let's focus first on where those numbers come from. In this case, there are two major data sets and the first and arguably the most significant of those, statistically at least, is a very large survey and it's not information gathered from the police or government. It's information that comes directly from people and their experience of crime. Tell us all about that.     MEGHAN ELKIN  That's correct. So the best source we have for measuring crime is the crime survey for England and Wales and this is a massive undertaking. We interview around 34,000 people aged 16 and over each year, and over 2000 children, and we really appreciate everyone who takes the time to respond to our survey as it helps us to produce these important figures. As you said, crime covers a wide range of offences and there's no perfect source, but the crime survey has had an established methodology over a long period of time, which really helps us to get a good idea of the trends and changes in society that people are experiencing.    MF Give us a sense of the scale of this operation. Is it one of the biggest surveys the ONS runs?    ME  It is, I would say that we are consistently speaking to 34,000 people each year and what's probably different to most surveys is that we have children as part of the response as well. So when we go to a household, we'll interview an adult, so someone aged 16 and over, to ask about their experiences. If there are children aged 10 to 15 in their household. We'll also ask if one of them would be able to complete our children's survey so that we get a picture of the crime that they're experiencing as well.    MF  And what is the particular value of speaking people to people face to face in their homes like that?    ME  I mean, the real value of the crime survey for measuring the trends is that it doesn't matter if people have reported what they've experienced to the police or not, so unlike police recorded crime, it doesn't have that impact. And so we can ask people about their experiences in the last 12 months. We'll also ask them questions about their attitudes towards crime related issues such as the police and amount of security that they have, and for the most sensitive questions rather than being asked by the interviewer directly, we'll give someone a tablet so that they can complete those questions privately themselves to ensure that confidentiality and confidence in telling us such sensitive information.    MF  That’s taken the survey into some quite new areas, hasn't it in recent years, would you like to talk about some of those developments? You talk about actually, and this is highly unusual, of course a very sensitive area, it's about the ability to actually speak to children as well. Tell us to what end that work has been directed...    ME  So for children in particular, we've been working closely with a number of stakeholders to understand what's most useful for us to ask children. So we do collect their general experiences of crime in the last 12 months, but we also ask them about their experiences online and that's provided some really useful data about children's lived experiences about being bullied and whether that's happening at school or online, but also the behaviours and activities that sometimes could be quite risky that they're taking part in online. And that's given some new information into that sector that we had just not understood before, and has been really useful in shaping policy and understanding how children can be better protected online.    MF  So this is quite an intensive encounter with the ONS data gatherer as they're sitting down for about 40 to 45 minutes or so. But how are the people selected? And how do you go about ensuring that they're a good representative sample and that we're not missing out important sections of the population, which, on a subject like this, of course, it's very important to get a really accurate picture of how people are experiencing crime at that grassroots level.    ME  So we use a postcode address file, basically a list of addresses to sample from, so households are chosen at random to ensure that we've got a representative sample for England and Wales. That's why it's really important and we really appreciate people responding to the survey because that's how we ensure good quality data, by getting that good, rounded sample.    MF  So there's a lot of rich data coming out of the crime survey, but by its nature, it doesn't cover some of the more serious offences does it?    ME  No that's true, particularly the higher harm but lower volume crimes, for example knife crime, those don't appear in the survey very often. And so we look to other data sources for those. It also excludes crimes that are often termed “victimless”, such as possession of drugs, which again, we then measure through different sources.    MF  And that is where the other major data source starts to become more relevant. We're looking at very serious offences particularly, including murder and rape. Those offences are covered by the police and their recording of crime. Tell us about the value of that data, and how that contributes to the wider understanding of crime.    ME  So the police record all the crimes that are reported to them and those are fed into us via the Home Office as a record of police recorded crime. And it has lots of advantages as a data source in that for some crime types, it is a good measure. And unlike the crime survey for those crime types, it can be very good at looking at short term trends. So particularly through the pandemic it was helpful for some of those crime types where we know that it's a better measure. But we also know that there are a lot of crimes that people don't report to the police and that's where that source of data struggles the most, particularly for really hidden crimes. Rape would be one of those crimes, where relatively few people do report that to the police so it doesn't appear in the numbers as much. But the police figures are subject to changes in recording practices. So when new offences are introduced that obviously changes how the count is put together, but also it’s impacted by police activity and how they record and that also will change the numbers. When you see increases in police recorded crime, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean that crime has gone up. And that's part of our work at ONS to unpick and understand what's going on there. But it does have benefits as you say, for some of the higher harm but lower volume crimes that we see, homicide it records very well, and for knife crime it's our best measure. So there's definitely a place for it as a data source still.    MF  So two major data sources contributing to this bigger picture. And what has that bigger picture been showing us these last few years?    ME  Well when we look across trends in general, actually, over time, crime has been decreasing since the mid 90s, and has been more flat in recent years. So the crime survey estimated around 20 million offences in 1995. And we've seen that decreasing over time and our latest data shows that it's around 5 million offences. And that's when you're using a comparable estimate. So the overall picture is very much if that crime sits much lower than it used to in the mid 90s. And that's not just a pattern that we've seen in England and Wales. It's a pattern that's reflected across other countries, across Europe and America. And it's something that lots of people have tried to understand what's really driven that long term change. More recently we have seen some decreases, some of them very much linked to the pandemic. But now as we look and compare before the pandemic to our most recent data, we have still seen some decreases. I think it's always important to point out that while total crime is a useful measure and reflection, it's only when you really start digging into the individual crime types that you can start seeing some trends that just get averaged out when you look at the total.    MF  Yes, you need to understand what kind of offences we're talking about. And if we talk about that long term picture, isn't it the case that we saw, coming out of the 1980s into the 1990s, turn of the century, violent crime decreasing, damage to property and so forth and theft from cars. Was that the broad trend that we saw?    ME  Yeah, so we've seen decreases in that time period across a number of crime types. One of the most popular explanations of the overall pattern there is the “security hypothesis”, which is very much built on the widespread improvements we've seen in security devices which have prevented crimes from happening and caused that decrease. So you mentioned there of vehicles, vehicle theft has decreased, most likely due to some things like improvements in central deadlocking systems and electric immobilisers, those security measures that have improved so much. But we have also seen decreases in violence across that time as well.     MF  Threat to property is one thing of course, but yes, personal safety and and our well-being on the streets, is of course a major factor as well. Talk us through the trends on that because if you rely entirely on the news media for your understanding of violent crime, you probably think that things are in a pretty desperate situation.    ME  So when we look back over that long term picture again, the estimate that we have from the crime survey for violence shows that there were around 4.5 million offences in 1995 And that compares to 1.2 million in the most recent data. Obviously, we've talked about the limitations to the crime survey data for understanding violence, but the more serious crimes within this type that we don't see in the crime survey are at much lower levels. They are lower volume, thankfully, and so we have seen some patterns there of variation during the pandemic.    MF  Another important development these last few years, of course, has been getting a much better understanding of the nature and extent of child abuse, an area of huge sensitivity and massive public concern. Can you talk a little about the work that's been going on in that area?    ME  So we've been conducting a feasibility study over the last few years to look at whether a measure of prevalence of child abuse could be estimated. A few years ago we put together a compendium of statistics on child abuse to help people understand the levels of child abuse and the nature of child abuse being experienced in our society. But the major gap in that evidence base is a prevalence level for what's being experienced now by children. We do in the crime survey for England and Wales ask people about the experiences they had as children. So we asked that of adults and that gives us some insight but it's still not helping policymakers understand what's actually happening in society today. So we've been conducting lots of research to understand the challenges, and how we might be able to overcome those of asking children such sensitive questions. And that work has been going really well, we're now at the stage of looking at what questions could actually be asked and the safeguarding that would need to wrap around that survey to look after the children completing it. So we're working very closely with DFE and Ofsted and schools to understand how that might best work going forward. So that's the next stage of that project.    MF  What has that experience and that engagement brought to this highly sensitive topic?    ME  We work very closely with the NSPCC, who have been extremely supportive of the project and how it's developing and helping us understand the safeguarding procedures that we might be able to use with a survey, and the support that we can give children and the different ways of doing that. There's a careful balance of helping children feel they are able to open up and tell us about experiences while also then safeguarding them and managing that challenge of confidentiality. And the NSPCC and others like them, obviously have great experience of being in this place and supporting children that we can then take on board to make sure that we do the survey in the best way possible.    MF  That's going to remain an important piece of work for the future. If there's one really important use of all this data, it is to understand the risks that any of us face of becoming the victim of crime at any given time. Billy, what are the numbers saying about that?    BILLY GAZARD  So I think it's quite a complicated picture. When we're talking about all the crime that the crime survey measures, for example, just under one in five people would have experienced a crime in the last 12 months according to the latest data, but obviously that varies across different crime types. So for example, fraud, about one in 12 people would have experienced fraud in the last 12 months, whereas offences such as violence, only about 2% of the population would have experienced a violent offence in the last 12 months.    MF  That overall is kind of reassuring, I guess, but nevertheless, those are significant sections of the population.    BG  Yes, I agree. That still translates into a lot of people experiencing that crime. So obviously, it's really important that we continue to monitor levels of violence moving forward to see how that changes over time.    MF  And if you break it down by geography, I guess of course, in some areas, those risks, particularly of violence and crimes against property are going to be much higher?    BG  This is looking at the national picture, but there will be variations at geographical levels, as well as by lots of different characteristics. For example, we know that younger people are at more risk of experiencing violence than older sections of the population.    MF  So that's the overall picture, but Meghan the risks might be rather different if you happen to be female.    MEGHAN ELKIN  There are some crime types that disproportionately affect women and girls compared to men and boys. Say for example, we estimate 1.6 million women aged 16 to 74 suffered domestic abuse in the last year and that one in three women over the age of 16 were subjected to at least one form of harassment in the last year. So there again, there is that variation in crime types that people are experiencing. And when we look at measures around domestic abuse, again, the crime survey for England and Wales is our most trusted measure. And as I reflected earlier, those are the crime types where we actually give respondents a tablet so that they can complete those questions confidentially. And actually, that posed us a particular challenge during the pandemic where our face-to-face interviewing had to stop and we moved to telephone interviews, and we managed to make that switch very quickly to be able to keep getting the crime estimates that were needed to understand society. But we did think there was a risk of asking people on the telephone those really sensitive questions about experiences of domestic abuse and sexual assault, but the concerns around confidentiality and respondent safeguarding were just too great for us to be able to ask those questions. So for a period of time, we weren't collecting that information when the survey returned to the field, though, we went back as early as we could so that we could start collecting those important topics again. And we now have the first data from those for domestic abuse since before the pandemic started. Now that we've started to get the face-to-face survey back into publication, some caution needs to be taken for interpreting those results. Because of how the surveys come back there are some challenges to quality and so again, we need to be a bit cautious in interpreting them, but it's so important that we've got those figures back. And actually what we see from the crime survey is that there's been no change in the prevalence of domestic abuse in the most recent data when compared to before the pandemic. But this is an opportunity to show how we use multiple data sources to really understand what might be going on in society and what people are experiencing. Because while the crime survey has now shown no change in the prevalence of domestic abuse, we have seen increases throughout that time in police recorded crime data. And we've also seen increases in data that we collect from charities. We work closely with a range of charities in the domestic abuse space to understand the changes that are happening to their services and the demand they're seeing, but also to help us understand the nature of abuse. So during lockdowns for example, we saw a 22% increase in calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline for the year ending March 21, so there was definitely that increase in demand. But now combining that with the crime survey evidence that we haven't seen an increase in prevalence, actually that helps us understand that maybe that increase in demand from charities primarily came from a lack of other coping mechanisms and people reaching out in different ways to get the support they needed during that difficult time.    MF  And that would be seem to be a very valuable example of using other data sources than police recorded crime to get an accurate picture of what's going on, because of the simple reluctance that so many people have in reporting these experiences when they happen to them.    ME  Yes, that's true. I mean, the evidence we have is that one in five victims of partner abuse in the last year would have told the police, and that just shows how hidden these crime types are. And that's true when you look into sexual assault as well, where one in six tell us that they would have told the police about what happened to them. And that's an area where we haven't used charity data before to help us understand sexual assault, but it's something we're working on at the moment to be included in next year's publication.    MF  Are there other areas of offending where we could possibly get a better picture than we currently have at the moment?    ME  So harassment is also an area that in initial work on violence against women and girls, we found that actually there wasn't as much data as we thought there might be to help understand that situation. So we used some questions on the opinion survey last year to help us understand levels of harassment at a very basic level, for lack of a better description. But we've now introduced new questions on the crime survey as well to help us understand that topic. But again, I think that's going to be one where when that data becomes available to us to analyse we'll be able to start looking at other groups and organisations we'd like to work with to understand better that situation and support our efforts to make our statistics more inclusive. Working with stakeholders really helps us to look for these new data sources and new insights, to really understand the scale and nature of crime that people are experiencing.    MF  So Billy, just as the recording of crime evolves over time, so does what we consider to be a criminal offence. Tell us about the offences of the past, and what acts were regarded as criminal in their day and are no longer.    BILLY GAZARD  Yes I think it's important to remember that our laws are always changing to reflect the concerns of our society as it evolves. Something that was criminal hundreds of years ago might sound pretty absurd today. So for example, playing football used to be an offence in mediaeval times, there was punching the ball as well as kicking the ball and deaths were not uncommon.   MF  That's not a well-known fact!   BG  It actually became an offence in 1388 and wasn’t repealed until 1845.    MF  And were any people prosecuted? I think we know we know what the sentence was...    BG  The sentence for breaking this law was actually six days in prison. There are no stats on how many people were punished for breaking this law or how many people were put in prison for that. Another offence it seems absurd today, but we do have some stats on how many people actually were prosecuted for this is witchcraft. This actually became an offence in 1542 and it wasn't repealed until 1736 and during this time 500 witches were put on trial and over 100 of those were executed.    MF  Grisly stuff! History has moved on, and of course these days we're dealing with some very 21st century phenomenon, and that of course is the growth of online crime, cybercrime and and phishing scams. Tell us about the emergence of that type of offending. What has happened over the last few years and what is the position now?    BG  So what we've seen with fraud and computer misuse offences is very different to what we've seen with other types of offences. But unfortunately, we've only been starting to measure fraud and computer misuse offences on the crime survey since 2017. So we don't have the same long standing time series that we have for the other crime types, and this is obviously because a lot of online crime, this is a fairly new phenomenon, so we've taken our time to really develop those questions and now they are on the survey. What we have seen over the last five years since we started recording these offences is that those offences have stayed fairly flat over that time period. Over the pandemic however, we did see an increase in fraud and computer misuse offences during that period and we think that's probably to do with people spending more time at home and spending more time online. And what we did see in terms of fraud, we saw that the proportion of fraud incidents that were cyber related increased up to almost two thirds, from about 50% before the pandemic. So it suggests that actually, a lot of the rise in fraud offences that we did see were because of a rise in cyber related fraud rather than offline fraud.    MF  One popular conception is that it's mainly elderly people who are the targets of this online crime, but that's not actually the case is it?    BG  No. And definitely, when we look at our data, that's definitely not something that we're finding. Actually what we find is that adults aged 75 years or older are actually less likely to be victims of fraud. It's those in working age groups, adults aged 25 to 44 for example, who are more risk of receiving phishing messages, those employed and those living in less deprived areas are much more likely to receive those messages. And that might be to do with fraudsters targeting those groups because they know that they have more disposable money. So definitely older people are at less risk than the working population.    MF  So there is something in this argument perhaps that crime generally has moved online?    BG  I think there’s definitely an argument that a lot more crime is happening online, and we're definitely seeing that with fraud incidents. We have less data on other crime types, though obviously the internet and the act of being online can be used across many crime types. For example, harassment, stalking, these are other offenses that people can use online tools to commit. And that's something that we're always trying to improve on the crime survey, to introduce those types of questions so that we can get a better understanding of how online tools are being used to commit crimes.    MF  So online crime is a relatively recent development, but crime and offending of course, continues to develop unfortunately and go in different directions. Tell us about other developments that the ONS has got in hand. To try and either capture new types of offending or perhaps just get a better insight on more established patterns of crime and harm.    BG  In the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), we ask people living in private households lots of questions about their experiences with crime so we can produce an estimation of how much crime that group of people is experiencing. That's about 98% of the population of England and Wales. But what the survey doesn't cover is people who do not live in private households. This covers, for example, people living in residential care settings, or homeless people, students living in student halls. So although this is only about 2% of the population, these groups have very different experiences of crime. And it's really important that we also try and capture their experiences so that we can provide information for policymakers to take action on the crime that those groups are experiencing. One of the things that we're trying to do is produce a publication looking at crimes experienced by non-household populations as well. So we're currently doing some work investigating what other data sources are available that we can use to shine the light on it at ONS and share that information alongside what we do with household populations. So we're going to be going out talking to various stakeholders, talking to different data holders to see how can we work together to bring a picture of all the data that we have and better understand what the risks are for these groups in terms of experiencing crime and how can we bring all of that together.    MF  So as crime continues to evolve you can count on one thing, the ONS will continue to measure it, and explore it, and hopefully contribute to solving it.   Thanks very much to Meghan Elkin and Billy Gazard. I'm Miles Fletcher, and you've been listening to ‘Statistically Speaking’. You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all other major podcast platforms.   Our producers at the ONS are Steve Milne and Alisha Arthur.   Until next time, goodbye.       

In this episode Miles is joined by Professor Luciano Floridi of Oxford University; Simon Whitworth of the UK Statistics Authority; and Pete Stokes from the ONS to talk about data ethics and public trust in official statistics.   TRANSCRIPT   MILES FLETCHER    Hello, I'm Miles Fletcher, and in this episode of Statistically Speaking we're exploring data ethics and public trust in official statistics. In 2007, 15 years ago to the very day we are recording this, the UK Parliament gave the Office for National Statistics the objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. But what does, or should, the “public good” mean? How does the ONS seek to deliver it in practice? Why should the public trust us to act in their interests at a time of exponential growth in data of all kinds? Where are the lines to be drawn between individual privacy and anonymity on the one hand, the potential of data science to improve public services and government policies to achieve better health outcomes, even saving lives, on the other.   Joining me to discuss these topics today are Simon Whitworth, Head of Data Ethics at the UK statistics authority, Pete Stokes, Director of the Integrated Data programme here at the ONS and Luciano Floridi, professor of philosophy and the ethics of information and director of the digital ethics lab at the Oxford Internet Institute.   Professor let's start this big concept with you. What do you think Parliament meant when it said that the ONS should serve the public good in this context?     LUCIANO FLORIDI     It might have meant many things, and I suspect that a couple of them must have been in their minds. First of all, we know that data or information, depending on the vocabulary, has an enormous value if you know how to use it. And, collecting it and using it properly for the future of the country, to implement the right policies, to avoid potential mistakes and to see things in advance - knowledge is power, information is power. So, this might have been one of the things that they probably meant by “public good”. The other meaning, it might be a little bit more specific...It's when we use the data appropriately, ethically, to make sure that some sector or some part of the population is not left behind, to learn who needs more help, to know what help and when to deliver it, and to whom. So, it's not just a matter of the whole nation doing better, or at least avoiding problems, but also specific sectors of the population being helped, and to make sure that the burden and the advantages are equally distributed among everybody. That's normally what we mean by public good and certainly, that analysis is there to serve it.    MF    So there's that dilemma between using the power of data to actually achieve positive outcomes. And for government, on the other hand, being seen as overbearing, or Orwellian, and spying on people through the use of data.    LF    That would be the risk that sometimes comes under the term “paternalism”, that knowing a lot about your citizens might lead to the temptation of manipulating their lives, their choices, their preferences. I wouldn't over-emphasise this though. The kind of legislation that we have and the constraints, the rules, the double checking, make sure that the advantage is always in view and can more easily be squeezed out of the data that we accumulate, and sometimes the potential abuses and mistakes, the inevitable temptation to do the wrong thing, are kept in check. So yes, the State might use the government’s political power, might misuse data, and so we need to be careful, but I wouldn't list that as my primary worry. My primary worry perhaps, would be under-using the data that we have, or making mistakes inadvertently.    MF    Do you think then, perhaps as a country, the UK has been too cautious in this area in the past?    LF    I don't think it has been too cautious, either intellectually or strategically. There's been a lot of talking about doing the right thing. I think it's been slightly cautious, or insufficiently radical, in implementing policies that have been around for some time. But we now have seen several governments stating the importance of that analysis, statistical approaches to evidence, and so on. But I think that there is more ambition in words than in deeds, so I would like to see more implementations, more action and less statements. Then the ambition will be matched by the actions on the ground.    MF    One of the reasons perhaps there might have been caution in the past is of course concern about how the public would react to that use of data. What do we know of public attitudes now in 2022, to how government bodies utilise data?    LF    I think the impression is that, depending on whom you ask, whether it is the younger population or slightly older people my age, people who lived in the 50s versus my students, they have different attitudes. We're getting used to the fact that our data are going to be used. The question is no longer are they going to be used, but more like, how and who is using them? For what purposes? Am I in charge? Can I do something if something goes wrong? And I would add also, in terms of attitude, one particular feature which I don't see sufficiently stressed, is who is going to help me if something goes wrong? Because the whole discussion, or discourse, should look more at how we make people empowered, so that they can check, they have control, they can go do this, do that. Well, who has the time, the ability, the skills, and indeed the will, to do that? It's much easier to say, look, there will be someone, for example the government, who will protect your rights, who you can approach, and they will do the right thing for you. Now we're getting more used to that. And so, I believe that the attitude is slightly changing towards a more positive outlook, as long as everything is in place, we are seeing an increasingly positive attitude towards public use of public data.    MF    Pete, your role is to make this happen. In practice, to make sure that government bodies, including the ONS, are making ethical use of data and serving the public good. Just before we get into that though, explain if you would, what sort of data is being gathered now, and for what purposes?    PETE STOKES    So we've got a good track record of supporting research use of survey data, that we collect largely in ONS, but on other government departments as well. But over the last few years, there's been an acceleration and a real will to make use of data that have been collected for other purposes. We make a lot of use now of administrative data, these are data that are collected by government not for an analytical purpose but for an operational purpose. For example, data that are collected by HMRC from people when they're collecting tax, or from the Department of Work and Pensions when they're collecting benefits, or from local authorities when they're collecting council tax - all of those administrative data are collected and stored. There's an increasing case to make those data available for analysis which we're looking to support. And then the other new area is what's often called “faster data”, and these data that are typically readily available, usually in the public domain where you get a not so deep insight as you'd get from a survey of administrative data, but you could get a really quick answer. And a good example of that from within the ONS is that we calculate inflation. As a matter of routine, we collect prices from lots of organisations, but you can more quickly do some of that if you can pull some data that are readily available on the internet to give you those quicker indicators, faster information of where prices are rising quickly where they're dropping quickly. There's a place for all of these depending on the type of analysis that you want to do.    MF    This is another area where this ethical dilemma might arise though isn't it, because when you sit down with someone and they've agreed to take part in the survey, they know what they're going in for. But when it comes to other forms of information, perhaps tax information that you've mentioned already, some people might think, why do they want to know that?    PS    When people give their data to HMRC or to DWP as part of the process of receiving a service, like paying tax for example, I think people generally understand what they need to give that department for their specific purpose. When we then want to use this data for a different purpose, there is a larger onus on us to make sure that we are protecting those data, we're protecting the individual and that those data are only being used ethically and in areas of trust, specifically in the public interest. So, it's important that we absolutely protect the anonymity of the individuals, that we make sure where their data are used, and that we are not using the data of those data subjects as individuals, but instead as part of a large data-set to look for trends and patterns within those data. And finally, that the analysis that are then undertaken with them are explicitly and demonstrably in the public interest, that they serve the public good of all parts of society.    MF    And that's how you make the ethical side of this work in practice, by showing that it can be used to produce faster and more accurate statistics than we could possibly get from doing a sample survey?    PS    Yes, exactly, and sample surveys are very, very powerful when you want to know about a specific subject, but they're still relatively small. The largest sample survey that the ONS does is the Labour Force Survey, which collects data from around 90,000 people every quarter. Administrative datasets have got data from millions of people, which enables you to draw your insights not just at a national level and national patterns, but if you want to do some analysis on smaller geographic areas, administrative data gives you the power to do that when surveys simply don't. But, any and all use of data must go through a strict governance process to ensure that the confidentiality of the data subjects be preserved. And not only will the use be clearly and demonstrably in the public interest, but also, will be ethically sound and will stand up to scrutiny in that way as well.     MF    And who gets to see this stuff?    PS    The data are seen by the accredited researchers that apply to use it. So, a researcher applies to use the data, they're accredited, and they demonstrate their research competence and their trustworthiness. They can use those data in a secure lockdown environment, and they do their analysis. When they complete their analysis, those can then be published. Everybody in the country can see the results of those analyses. If you've taken part in a social survey, or you've contributed some data to one of the administrative sources that we make available, you can then see all the results of all the analysis that are done with those data.    MF    But when you say its data, this is where the whole process of anonymization is important, isn't it? Because if I'm an accredited researcher selling it to see names and addresses, or people's personal, sensitive personal information.    PS    No, absolutely not. And the researchers only get to see the data that they need for their analysis. And because we have this principle, that the data are being used as an aggregated dataset, you don't need to see people's names or people's addresses. You need to know where people live geographically, in a small or broad area, but not the specific address. You need to know someone's demographic characteristics, but you don't need to know their name, so you can't see their name in the data. And that principle of pseudonymisation, or the de-identification of data, before their used is really important. When the analyses are completed and the outputs are produced, those are then reviewed by an expert team at ONS, and so the data are managed by us to ensure that they are fully protected, wholly non-disclosive, and that it's impossible to identify a member of the public from the published outputs.    MF    Historically, government departments didn't have perhaps the best record in sharing data around other bodies for the public benefit in this way. But all that changed, didn't it? A few years back with a new piece of legislation which liberalised, to an extent, what the ONS is able to do.    PS    So, the Digital Economy Act, passed in 2017, effectively put on a standard footing the ability of other departments to make their data available for researchers in the same way that ONS had already been able to do since the 2007 System Registration Service Act. It gave us parity, which then gave other departments the ability to make their data available and allow us to help them to do so, to take the expertise that the ONS has in terms of managing these data securely, managing access to them appropriately, accrediting the researchers, checking all the outputs and so on, to give the benefit of our expertise to the rest of government. In order that the data that they hold, that has previously been underutilised arguably, could then be fully used for analyses to develop policies or deliver services, to improve understanding of the population or cohorts of the population or geographic areas of the country, or even sectors of industry or segments of businesses, for example, in a way that hasn't previously been possible, and clearly benefits the country overall.    MF    So the aim here is to make full use of a previously untapped reservoir, a vast reservoir, an ocean you might even say, of public data. But who decides what data gets brought in in this way?    PS    We work closely with the departments that control the data, but ultimately, those departments decide what use can be made of their data. So, it is for HMRC, DWP, the Department for Education, it’s for them to decide which data they choose to make available through the Secure Research Service (SRS) or the Integrated Data Service (IDS) that we run in ONS. When they're supportive and recognise the analytical value of their data, we then manage the service where researchers apply to use those data. Those applications are then assessed by ONS first and foremost, we then discuss those requests and the use cases with the data owning departments and say, do you agree this would be a sensible use of your data?     MF    Is there an independent accreditation panel that reports to the UK statistics Authority Board, that assesses the request to use the data is in the public interest, that it serves the public good?    PS    The ethics of the proposal are also assessed by an independent ethics advisory committee, whether it's the national statistician's data ethics advisory committee or another. There's a lot of people involved in the process to make sure that any and every use of data is in the public interest.     MF    From what we know from the evidence available, certainly according to the latest public confidence and official statistics survey - that's a big biannual survey run by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) - I guess for that, and other reasons, public trust remains high. The Survey said 89% of people that gave a view trusted ONS, and 90% agreed that personal information provided to us would be kept confidential. But is there a chance that we could lose some of that trust now, given that there is much greater use, and much greater sharing, of admin data? It should be said that it doesn't give people the chance to opt out.    PS    I think one of the reasons that trust has remained high is because of the robust controls we have around the use of data. Because of the comprehensive set of controls and the framework that we put around use of data that protects confidentiality, that ensures that all uses are in the public interest. And another important component of it is that all use of data that we support is transparent by default. So, any analyst wanting to use data that are held by ONS, or from another department that we support, we publish the details of who those analysts are, which data they're using, what they're using them for, and then we require them to publish the outputs as well. And that transparency helps maintain public trust because if someone wants to know what their data is being used for, they can go to our website or directly to the analyst, and they can see the results tangibly for themselves. Now, they might not always agree that every use case is explicitly in the public interest, but they can see the thought process. They can see how the independent panel has reached that conclusion, and that helps us to retain the trust. There's a second half of your question around whether there is a risk of that changing. There is always a risk but we are very alive to that, which is why as we built the Integrated Data Service, and we look to make more and more government data available, that we don't take for granted the trust we've already got, and that we continue to work with the public, and with privacy groups, to make sure that as we build the new service and make more data available, we don't cross a line inadvertently, and we don't allow data to be used in a way that isn't publicly acceptable. We don't allow data to be combined in a way that would stretch that comfort. And this is that kind of proactive approach that we're trying to take, that we believe will help us retain public trust, despite making more and more data available.     MF     Professor Floridi, we gave you those survey results there, with people apparently having confidence in the system as it stands, but I guess it just takes a couple of negative episodes to change sentiment rapidly. What examples have we seen of that, and how have institutions responded?    LF    I think the typical examples are when data are lost, for example, inadvertently because of a breach and there is nobody at fault, but maybe someone introduced the wrong piece of software. It could be a USB, someone may be disgruntled, or someone else has found a way of entering the database - then the public gets very concerned immediately. The other case is when there is the impression, which I think is largely unjustified, but the impression remains, that the data in question are being used unjustly to favour maybe some businesses, or perhaps support some policies rather than others. And I agree with you, unfortunately, as in all cases, reputation is something very hard to build and can be easily lost. It's a bit unfair, but as always in life, building is very difficult but breaking down and destroying is very easy. I think that one important point here to consider is that there is a bit of a record as we move through the years. The work that we're talking about, as we heard, 2017 is only a few years ago, but as we build confidence and a good historical record, mistakes will happen, but they will be viewed as mistakes. In other words, there will be glitches and there will be forgiveness from the public built into the mechanism, because after say 10 or 15 years of good service, if something were to go wrong once or twice, I think the public will be able to understand that yes, things may go wrong, but they will go better next time and the problem will be repaired. So, I would like to see this fragility if you like, this brittle nature of trust, being counterbalanced by a reinforced sense of long-term good service that you know delivers, and delivers more and more and better and better, well then you can also build a little bit of tolerance for the occasional mistakes that are inevitable, as in everything human, they will occur once or twice.    MF    Okay, well, touching my mic for what would in effect be my desk, I can say that I don't think ONS has had an episode such as you describe, but of course, that all depends on the system holding up. And that seems a good point to bring in Simon Whitworth from the UK Statistics Authority, as kind of the overseeing body of all this.  Simon, how does the authority go about its work? One comment you see quite commonly on social media when these topics are discussed, is while I might trust the body I give my data to, I don't trust them not to go off and sell it, and there have been episodes of data being sold off in that way. I think it's important to state isn't it, that the ONS certainly never sells data for private gain. But if you could talk about some of the other safeguards that the authority seeks to build into the system.     SIMON WHITWORTH    The big one is around the ethical use of data. The authority, and Pete referred to this, previously back in 2017, established something called the National Statisticians Data Ethics Advisory Committee, and that's an independent committee of experts in research, ethics and data law. And we take uses of data to that committee for their independent consideration. And what's more, we're transparent about the advice that that committee provides. So, what we have done, what we've made publicly available, is a number of ethical principles which guide our work. And that committee provide independent guidance on a particular use of data, be they linking administrative data, doing new surveys, using survey data, whatever they may be, they consider projects from across this statistical system against those ethical principles and provide independent advice and guidance to ensure that we keep within those ethical principles. So that's one thing we do, but there's also a big programme of work that comes from something that we've set up called the UK Statistics Authority Centre for Applied Data Ethics, and what that centre is trying to do is to really empower analysts and data users to do that work in ethically appropriate ways, to do their work in ways that are consistent with those ethical principles. And that centres around trying to promote a culture of ethics by design, throughout the lifecycle of different uses of data, be they the collection of data or the uses of administrative data. We've provided lots of guidance pieces recently, which are available on our website, around particular uses of data - geospatial data, uses of machine learning - we've provided guidance on public good, and we're providing training to support all of those guidance pieces. And the aim there is, as I say, to empower analysts from across the analytical system, to be able to think about ethics in their work and identify ethical risks and then mitigate those ethical risks.     MF    You mentioned the Ethics Committee, which is probably not a well-known body, independent experts though you say, these are not civil servants. These are academics and experts in the field. Typically, when do they caution researchers and statisticians, when do they send people back to think again, typically?     SW    It's not so much around what people do, it's about making sure how we do it is in line with those ethical principles. So, for example, they may want better articulations of the public good and consideration of potential harms. Public good for one section of society might equal public harm to another section of society. It's very often navigating that and asking for consideration of what can be done to mitigate those potential public harms and therefore increase the public good of a piece of research. The other thing I would say is being transparent. Peter alluded to this earlier, being transparent around data usage and taking on board wherever possible, the views of the public throughout the research process. Encouraging researchers as they're developing the research, speaking to the public about what they're doing, being clear and being transparent about that and taking on board feedback that they receive from the public whose data they're using. I would say that they're the two biggest areas where an estate provides comments and really useful and valuable feedback to the analytical community.     MF    Everyone can go online and see the work of the committee, to get the papers and minutes and so forth. And this is all happening openly and in a comfortable way?    SW    Yes, absolutely. We publish minutes of the meetings and outcomes from those meetings on the UK Statistics Authority’s website. We also make a range of presentations over the course of the year around the work of the committee and the supporting infrastructure that supports the work because we have developed a self-assessment tool which allows analysts at the research design phase to consider those ethical principles, and different components of the ethical principles, against what they're trying to do. And that's proved to be extremely popular as a useful framework to enable analysts to think through some of these issues, and I suppose move ethics from theory to something a bit more applied. In terms of their work last year, over 300 projects from across the analytical community, both within government and academia, used that ethics self-assessment tool, and the guidance and training that sits behind it is again available on our website.    MF    I'm conscious of sounding just a little bit sceptical, and putting you through your paces to explain how the accountability and ethical oversight works, but can you think of some examples where there's been ethical scrutiny, and research outcomes having satisfied that process, have gone on to produce some really valuable benefits?    SW    ONS has done a number of surveys with victims of child sex abuse to inform various inquiries and various government policies. They have some very sensitive ethical issues that require real thinking about and careful handling. You know, the benefits of that research has been hugely important in showing the extent of child sex abuse that perhaps previously was unreported and providing statistics to both policymakers and charities around experiences of child sex abuse. In terms of administrative data, yes, there are numerous big data linkage projects that have come to ONS and have been considered by ONS, in particular, linkage surveys that follow people over time. Linkages done over time provide tremendous analytical value, but of course need some careful handling to ensure that access to that data is provided in an ethically appropriate way, and that we're being transparent. So those are the two I think of, big things we are thinking about in an ethically appropriate way. And being able to do them in an ethically appropriate way has really allowed us to unleash the analytical value of those particular methods, but in a way that takes the public with us and generates that public trust.    MF    Pete, you are part of the organisation that in fact runs an award scheme to recognise some of the outstanding examples of the secure use of data?    PS    We do, and it's another part of promoting the public benefit that comes from use of data. Every year we invite the analysts who use the Secure Research Service (SRS), or other similar services around the country, to put themselves forward for research excellence awards. So that we can genuinely showcase the best projects from across the country, but then also pick up these real examples of where people have made fantastic use of data, and innovative use of data, really demonstrating the public good. We've got the latest of those award ceremonies in October this year, and it's an open event so anybody who is interested in seeing the results of that, the use of data in that way, they would be very welcome to attend.    MF    Give us a couple of examples of recent winners, what they've delivered.    PS    One of the first award winners was looking at the efficacy of testing that was done for men who may or may not have been suffering from prostate cancer, and it analysed when if a person was given this test, what was the likelihood of its accuracy, and therefore whether they should start treatment, and the research was able to demonstrate that actually, given the efficacy, that it wasn't appropriate to treat everyone who got a positive test, because there was risk of doing more harm than good if it had persisted, which is really valuable. But this year, we'll be seeing really good uses of data in response to the pandemic, for example, tying this back to the ethics, when you talk about the use of data made during the pandemic in retrospect, it's clearly ethical, it's clearly in the public interest. But, at the start of the pandemic, we had to link together data from the NHS on who was suffering from COVID which was really good in terms of the basic details of who had COVID and how seriously and sadly, whether they died, but it missed a lot of other detail that helps us to understand why.   We then linked those data with data from the 2011 Census where you can get data on people's ethnic group, on their occupation, on their living conditions, on the type and size of the family they live with, which enable much richer insights, but most importantly, enabled government to be able to target its policy at those groups who were reluctant to get the vaccination to understand whether people were suffering from COVID due to their ethnicity, or whether it was actually more likely to be linked to the type of occupation they did. Really, really valuable insights that came from being able to link these data together, which now sounds sensible, but at the time did have those serious ethical questions. Can we take these two big datasets that people didn't imagine we could link together and and keep the analyses ethically sound and in the public interest. What’s what we were able to do.     MF    That's certainly a powerful example. But before we pat ourselves on the back too much for that survey I mentioned, some of the research we've been doing at the ONS does suggest that there is nevertheless a hardcore cohort of sceptics on all of this.  Particularly, it is suggested, among the older age groups, the over 55’s in particular. I mentioned the social media reaction you see as well. Kind of ironic you might think, given the amount of data that big social media platforms and other private organisations hold on people.   Professor, do you think there's a paradox at work there? People are apparently inclined not to trust public bodies, accountable public bodies, but will trust the big social media and internet giants? Or is it just a question of knowledge, do you think?    LF    I think it might be partly knowledge, the better you know the system, who is doing what, and also the ability to differentiate between the different organisations and how they operate, under what kind of constraints, how reliable they are, etc, versus for example, commercial uses, advertisement driven, etc.   The more you know, and it happens to be almost inevitably the younger you are, the more you might be able to see with a different kind of degree of trust, but also almost indifference, toward the fact that the data are being collected and what kind of data are being collected. I think the statistics that you were mentioning seem to be having an overlapping feature. A less young population, a less knowledgeable population, is also the population that is less used to social media, sharing, using data daily, etc. And is also almost inevitably a little bit more sceptical when it comes to giving the data for public good, or knowing that something is going to be done by, for example, cross referencing different databases.  On the other side, you find the slightly younger, the more socially active, the kids who have been growing with social media - and they are not even on Facebook these days anymore, as my students remind me, Facebook is for people like me - so let's get things right now, when it comes to Tiktok, they know that they are being monitored, they know that the data is going to be used all over the place. There is a mix of inevitability, a sense of who cares, but also a sense of, that's okay. I mean data is the air you breathe, the energy you must have, it's like electricity. We don't get worried every time we turn on the electricity on in the house because we might die if someone has unreliably connected the wires, we just turn it on and trust that everything is going to be okay. So, I think that as we move on with our population becoming more and more well acquainted with technology, and who does work with the data and what rules are in place, as we heard before, from Simon and Pete, I mean, there are plenty of frameworks and robust ways of double checking that nothing goes wrong, and if something goes wrong, it gets rectified as quickly as possible. But the more we have that, I think the less the sceptics will have a real chance of being any more than people who subscribe to the flat earth theory. But we need to consider that the point you made is relevant. A bit of extra education on the digital divide, which we mentioned implicitly in our conversation today. Who is benefiting from what? And on which side of the digital innovation are these people placed? I think that needs to be addressed precisely now, to avoid scepticism which might be not grounded.    MF    I hope through this interesting discussion we've managed to go some way to explaining how it's all done, and why it's so very important. Simon Whitworth, Pete Stokes, Professor Luciano Floridi, thank you very much indeed for taking part in Statistically Speaking today.   I'm Miles Fletcher and thanks for listening. You can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms. You can comment or ask us a question on Twitter at @ONSFocus. Our producer at the ONS is Julia Short. Until next time, goodbye    

David Freeman and Nicola White join Miles to discuss how the Office for National Statistics (ONS) tracks employment and pay across the UK.   Transcript: Hello and welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics podcast. In this episode, we enter the world of work and clock on for a shift with the ONS labour market team. We'll explore how they keep track of employment and pay across the UK and find out how the figures we hear so much about in the news should really be interpreted. At your service, are employees of the month, our head of labour market and household statistics David Freeman, and later on his colleague, senior statistician Nicola White.   David, let's start with the basics. And one common misconception you still hear around the official statistics on unemployment is that they're based on the number of people claiming out of work benefits. And so, the theory goes therefore, that they're subject to manipulation in some way. But to be absolutely clear, the figures don't come from any other government department. This is data that comes from the ONS talking directly to real people, in their tens of thousands.    DAVID FREEMAN  That's absolutely right, Miles. The bulk of the information that we publish as part of our labour market statistics come from something called the ‘Labour Force Survey’. As this is one of our big household surveys, every three months we sample 40,000 households across the UK. And we go and we interview the people in those households about their labour market status. So, are they working, are they not working. We also gather a lot of information about the people in those households, what age they are, whether they have got a disability, what ethnic group [they belong to], which gives a us rich picture of the UK labour market.    MILES FLETCHER  And by the standards of any survey, any regular survey, that's a huge sample isn’t it. I know we don't go in for superlatives, but it's possibly the biggest household survey regularly undertaken of any kind?    DAVID FREEMAN  I think it is the biggest one in the UK, outside of the Census of course, and again, through the data that we use, we’ll learn about the labour market, but the data will also feed into things like population estimates. So quite a wide range of uses, but its core purpose is really trying to measure the UK labour market.    MILES FLETCHER  And it's that time spent with people to gather a whole raft of data from them, and at scale, that can give a localised picture, which is so important too.    DAVID FREEMAN  Absolutely, we get a lot of information from the Labour Force Survey, either by age groups, by country of birth, also by regional level, and we have an annual version of the Labour Force Survey where we put the data together across a longer time period, which means we can get data down to things like local authority levels as well which is important for local government.    MILES FLETCHER  And how do we choose people to take part?    DAVID FREEMAN   It’s a totally random process. So we have access to the postcode directory for the UK, which is effectively a list of all the households in the UK, and we take a random sample of those. However, we make sure within taking that sample that we're represented across the country. So within each local authority area, we've got enough people to be able to give us a robust estimate of what's happening there.   MILES FLETCHER  You stay in the survey a little while, don’t you?  DAVID FREEMAN  You do, that's right, and that's one of the strengths of the Labour Force Survey. If you're selected to take part, you are in there for what we call “five waves”. So if you're selected in January, we'll also come back and talk to you again in April, July, October and the following January. And that's important because not only do we find out what people are doing now, as you say we find out how people have changed, and whether they have moved into employment, out of employment, how have their circumstances changed. And that gives a deep insight into how people are flowing through the labour market and changing over time.    MILES FLETCHER  So, big sample, lots of data coming in. When it comes to the analysis though, essentially, we group people under three big categories. Now the first of those is employment. It sounds self-evident, but what is the definition of an employed person?    DAVID FREEMAN  To be employed is to be someone who has done paid work in the reference week, so when we interview people we’ll say, what were you doing in the week before we're interviewing you? They are considered employed if they have done paid work for a minimum of one hour in that week. So the bar is, you could say it’s quite low, in terms of one hour of work a week. But we have looked, and not that many people work that little in a week – less than 3% of people work less than five hours. So, as well as you'll get paid, we have a couple of other areas as well. We cover people who are employees, so employed by a company, the self-employed, people in government training schemes and people who work for their family business and might not get a wage packet but benefit from working for that business.    MILES FLETCHER  What is the average number of hours that employed people do?    DAVID FREEMAN   Overall, the average is around about 31 hours a week, and that does differ between if you're full time or part-time. So if you're full time, then the average is around 36. If you're part time, the average is around 16 hours a week.    MILES FLETCHER  Okay, so that's a working week. Now who is unemployed? Technically speaking.    DAVID FREEMAN  The technical definition of unemployed, there are three elements to it. Firstly, you've got to be not employed, so not doing any paid work. But you must also be actively seeking work in the previous four weeks. So that means applying for jobs, going to interviews, looking through listings, etc. And finally, you must be available to start work in the next two weeks. So you have got to be available to start a job within the next fortnight after we interview you. Again, another international definition used across the world to define who's unemployed.    MILES FLETCHER  And how long do you have to be unemployed to be classed as long-term unemployed? Because that's a very important category to understand as well.    DAVID FREEMAN  To be considered long-term unemployed, a person must have been in that position for a year or more.    MILES FLETCHER  What's the average time that people are currently spending unemployed?    DAVID FREEMAN  It's a bit hard to say, we don’t have a technical age or an average time, but the majority of people who are unemployed have been unemployed for less than six months. So people moving into unemployment after having recently lost a job or moving through unemployment to get to a job. And it's just under 1 in 3, who have been unemployed for more than a year.    MILES FLETCHER  So if you don't satisfy any of those two definitions. You're not doing any kind of paid work and you're not actively seeking it in the way you've described, where does that leave you?    DAVID FREEMAN  Well, that leaves you in a third group that we call the “economically inactive”. And so these people are not in work, and are either not actively seeking work, or are unavailable to start work. So you can be looking for work and not available, and you'd be economically inactive, or you might be available and not looking, and again, you'd be economically inactive there. And the sort of people included in this category are the sort of people who may be looking after family or home, they are stay-at-home parents, or they have caring responsibilities that mean they can't work. They might have a long-term illness or disability which means they are not able to work, or they may have retired. It's the people who aren't working and are not looking or available for work.    MILES FLETCHER  One contentious area under this definition of the economically inactive is a group that swells and contracts according to the economic cycle, and it’s that group of people who are unable to work and are collecting benefits. What do we understand about that group at the moment?    DAVID FREEMAN  That group as you say, it does change over time. And the reason for that is because people on benefits depend on the rules around those benefits. So, over the years we have published something we call the “claimant count”. This counts people claiming benefits and the main reason they're claiming benefits is because they're out of work.   MILES FLETCHER  And that used to be the main measure of our unemployment, as it was understood.    DAVID FREEMAN  You’re absolutely right. If we go back to the early mid 90s, it was a lead measure. But at that point the rules around the benefits were such that the official unemployment count and the benefit count was about the same. However, when we moved to Jobseeker's Allowance in the late 90s, the rules changed on benefits. So fewer unemployed qualified for the benefits, and the two measures did diverge there.    MILES FLETCHER  It's been said that there's a very large group now who are on out of work benefits alone, and that is hidden unemployment?     DAVID FREEMAN  Some of these people will be unemployed if they're out of work, and actively seeking or available to work. However, out of work benefits will also include people who we would class as economically inactive. Such as people who have a long-term illness or disability that prevents them from working. They'll be getting out of work benefits because they're not working, but because they're not able to look for work, or not actively looking for work, we wouldn't count them in our unemployment statistics. So yes, there are a lot of people on out of work benefits, more than we would count as unemployed. But not all these people would fit that definition of unemployed that we use.    MILES FLETCHER  But nonetheless a very important indicator when you're thinking about how people might be helped into work.    DAVID FREEMAN  That's right. Yeah, and and it indicates what that potential workforce could be. But obviously, some of these people may need some help to get themselves into a position where they're able to look for work and gain employment.    MILES FLATCHER  Okay, well what that briefly explained, is how the headline measures - you might like to call them your classic ONS measure of employment and unemployment - work. But one criticism that you might care to make about this system is that it takes a while to process and the numbers when they come out...there's a bit of a lag isn’t there.    DAVID FREEMAN  There is a little bit of a lag, again because of the size of the sample, the amount of data we have to process and the fact that we have to make sure we're getting enough responses in. There’s about a six-week lag between the end of the period we're looking at and the data being published into the public domain.    MILES FLATCHER  So in order to speed things up a bit, and to have a timelier indicator of what was happening with employment, and this came in very useful with the arrival of the pandemic, we've been using faster sources of information to supplement the headline employment figures. Can you talk us through that? What progress has been made and how useful these other sources of data have been?    DAVID FREEMAN  Yeah, so probably the biggest one that we've been using throughout the pandemic has been the counting of people for the real time tax information from the Revenue and Customs department. So this is a big database that HMRC hold, and it contains information about everyone on a payroll. So if you are on a pay as you earn scheme, all your information is collated in HMRC for the purposes of calculating your tax. At the end of 2019, we started working with HMRC on publishing regular data from that system. I counted the number of people on payroll schemes and how much they're earning. The benefits of this are that it is a complete count of people on the pay as you earn scheme, so it gives us lots of information, meaning we can analyse smaller levels and small groups of people without impacting on the confidentiality of the data. When the pandemic started, we worked with HMRC to see if we could speed the data up, because previously it was at the same sort of pace as the Labour Force Survey, so about six weeks, and we managed to move to what we call a flash estimate. This means we can publish the data for a particular month within three weeks of the end of that month, which is so much faster and was a real benefit at the beginning of the pandemic. Getting information quickly about what was happening to employees on tax schemes.    MILES FLETCHER  And that was vital wasn't it, to inform the policy response to the pandemic when it arrived. Because you know, waiting a few weeks could have been too late for a lot of people.    DAVID FREEMAN  It could have been, and this is a big step forward in using this local administrative data in the labour market, and we've carried on doing that flash estimate. And as well as that we've been, over the pandemic period and up to the present day, adding more and more information from the pay as you earn tax data. So, a company produces data for a local authority level, we also do it by regional and industry. So, lots of information much more quickly than we can get it from our survey data.    MILES FLETCHER  You could say we've got the best of both worlds now. We've got the rich data coming out of the Labour Force Survey. But on the other hand, we've also got the much quicker data coming hot off the systems of HMRC to give that flash picture as you described it.    DAVID FREEMAN  One of the things that has been very developed over the pandemic is having this extra data and it provides a very, very rich picture. And when you put it together, you do get a very, very good picture of what's happening in the economy. I mean, the next step is to try and actually bring these data sources together. So linking data from the tax system to survey data, and trying to exploit even more, the benefits of having these sorts of information available.    MILES FLETCHER  Do you think we'll get to the point where we replace the survey completely? Or will it continue to have that very important central role?    DAVID FREEMAN  I think surveys will always have a central role. The tax data is brilliant. It does only cover employees, so we don't we don't cover the self-employed, you don't cover government trainees or people working for their family business. Also, the level of information we get from the Labour Force Survey is much bigger than we get from administrative data. On the tax system, we merely have information that's relevant to people paying tax. So that means we don't get a lot of the information that we get from labour force surveys - whether someone's got a disability, what their ethnic group is, what their nationality is - and these are all important variables in terms of informing government policy and giving a picture of what's happening in the UK.    MILES FLETCHER  You mentioned that the tax data was a development that was already in progress before the pandemic, but it was sped up given the urgency of that situation, but other sources of data have been coming in as well?    DAVID FREEMAN  Another big source of data that we've been working with over the pandemic period has been the online job vacancies data from a company called Azuna, who we've been partnering with over the period. And this has been another big step forward in calculating the number of vacancies in the UK economy. The data we are getting is really really timely, so we can take a download of data on the Friday, and we’re publishing it the next week. So really timely. And, the information you're getting in an online job vacancy means we can look at things like where the vacancy is, so what geography it’s located in, and some indication of the skills or the occupation of that vacancy as well.  MILES FLETCHER  Obviously, if you think about impacts of the pandemic for quite a period, over the last two years, when you add it all up, we spent a lot of time chained to our laptops, in many cases, working from home. How has that rubbed off on the workforce now, and what do we think is the lasting impact of the working from home trend?    DAVID FREEMAN  Certainly, on the latest data we've got, it does look like there's been a bit of a shift in terms of the number of people who work at home on a regular basis. Prior to the pandemic, fewer than three in 10 people had ever worked from home at any point, whereas if you look at the most recent data, around 35% of people are working from home regularly. So that 1 in 3 people are now doing some work at home during the working week.    MILES FLETCHER  So that's a huge change and we reckon that is, to some extent, showing signs of lasting?    DAVID FREEMAN  It does look like it is lasting. Home working doesn't necessarily work for everyone. When we did the analysis, there's quite a few professions or occupations where homework is relatively low. That’s particularly in the caring occupations, retail, catering and construction, where it's hard, or if not impossible, to work from home.    MILES FLETCHER  We'll have to see how that develops over the months ahead. But another phenomenon that was spotted as we emerged from the pandemic was what's been called ‘The Great Resignation’. Over 50s apparently disengaging with the labour market, and that I guess, is them going from employment in large numbers into the ‘economically inactive’ category? What do we know about that?    DAVID FREEMAN  You're absolutely right. This is something we've seen particularly in the last 12 months, people over 50 are moving out of the labour market into economic inactivity. Some of these people are retiring, so particularly the over 60s, most of those people are retiring. However, for the people aged 50 to 59, a lot of them are retiring for health reasons. They've developed a long-term illness, which again may be related to COVID, which is preventing them from carrying on with work. And this is having an impact on the overall labour market because the employment rate is still lagging behind where we were pre-pandemic, and a lot of that is down to these people moving outside into economic inactivity.    MILES FLETCHER  That's an important factor because other ONS statistics tell us that there were some 800,000 people who report, or we estimate, are suffering the effects of long COVID. So that would be a big factor in this, one might think, and it really isn't a question then of people having had a taste of being at home all the time and thinking, “Oh I just don't want to go back to work. Let's call it a day now”.    DAVID FREEMAN  You're right. So the older people aged 60+, again, particularly people who have got a private pension and won’t rely on the state pension, it is that retirement. But say for those 50-59s, while some of them are retiring early, there are people who believe themselves too ill to work    MILES FLETCHER  And what do we understand then from our lifestyle survey? About how people's patterns of leisure and work have changed?    DAVID FREEMAN  There are a few things to think about again, will the people who have moved out of the workforce want to go back into the workforce. Looking at those over 60, only about 18% of those want to go back and will consider returning to work. Whereas those in their 50s, just over half would consider returning to work, but looking for a job that suits their skills and would suit their lifestyle. So, people wanting more flexible work and something that will fit around their caring responsibilities as well.    MILES FLETCHER  So overall, how do we think the UK did in terms of dealing with a pandemic? And particularly its impact on the labour market compared with other countries? Did they see these kind of impacts as well?    DAVID FREEMAN  It's quite interesting when you look at the impact of the pandemic across different countries. In terms of the UK, we have a very similar pattern to the rest of Europe. We saw a drop off in employment rate at the start of the pandemic and then gradual increases. But that drop off in employment was about 2 to 3% of the employment rate, and that's in stark contrast to the USA and Canada where the pandemic impact was much greater in terms of falling employment - about nine to 10 percentage points of the employment rate. Moving onto inactivity, what seems to be the difference is the coronavirus job retention scheme in the UK, and similar schemes across Europe, kept people linked to their job and in employment, rather than moving into unemployment. Unemployment remains, again in the UK and across Europe, relatively low. But all countries, including the USA and in Europe as well, saw an increase in the level of inactivity during the pandemic.    MILES FLETCHER  So overall the UK not too exceptional really, in how governments responded to the impacts of a pandemic, and how those effects played out on the labour force.    DAVID FREEMAN  Not very different at all at the beginning of the pandemic. We're seeing a little bit of a difference now, and we touched on it earlier in terms of economic inactivity, is that the UK employment rate is still a bit below where it was pre pandemic, whereas the EU and USA and Canada, they've got back to about where they were at the beginning of 2020. This links to the over 50s moving out of the workforce. We're still a little bit behind other European countries at the moment.    MILES FLETCHER  And explains perhaps why the over 50s are the subject of particular research, extra research going on now to understand what's really going on there.    DAVID FREEMAN  Yeah, absolutely. Because that does seem to be the difference between us and the rest of Europe.    MILES FLETCHER  Okay, well I mentioned earlier on, the richness of the data that we get from the Labour Force Survey, and when you delve into the data, you get to explore some quite interesting topics. And one of them we uncovered the other day was that even in 2022, there are still some jobs that are dominated by one gender. Tell us about that.    DAVID FREEMAN  Yeah, so this is a really interesting thing. We do put out regular data, where we go right into the detail of some of the occupations. And it is interesting when you look at the sort of gender split in some of these jobs. So, there are a few jobs where we have hardly any women at all doing them, so that includes ship officers and metal workers, and at the other end of the spectrum, we've got very few men who say they are dancers or choreographers.    MILES FLETCHER  You might be less surprised to hear that pipelayers tend to be all male, but also veterinary nurses are almost exclusively female.    DAVID FREEMAN  That's right. And again, if you look at other occupations, that are predominantly female, they are things like midwives, school secretaries, PA’s and secretaries, child minders, nursery nurses and medical secretaries. And then if you go to the occupations that are predominantly male, they’re very much in the construction space, so carpenters, bricklayers, electricians and plumbers.     MILES FLETCHER  How do we classify people into jobs? We don't just listen to how people describe themselves. You have to fit into some classification, don't you? How does that work?    DAVID FREEMAN  Well, we have got a classification, it's called a ‘standard occupational classification’, and that gets updated regularly. The latest version was updated in 2020. And the way we classify people, when we do the interviews as part of the Labour Force Survey, we ask them what their occupation is. And then we take that description, and we match it onto our list of occupations. There are hundreds of potential occupations. We've got a computer programme that helps when you put the description in, it'll narrow it down to a few options, and then the interviewer can pick the most suitable of those options to match what the person has told us.    MILES FLETCHER  And that makes the figures internationally comparable. Again, you can't tell the Labour Force Survey, well, I'm an image consultant. They'd have to find a way of matching that against one of the definitions, and I see we were asked the other day whether ‘Social Media Influencer’ was a classified job, it turns out it isn’t. They're either marketing associates, or actors and presenters, it turns out. These classifications, they're reviewed every 10 years or so aren't they, perhaps the next update will recognise a job like that.    DAVID FREEMAN  If it grows in terms of importance and the number of people doing it, it's quite likely it could end up with a classification. I mean, the latest update started including programmers as a separate job description. They were lumped in with other things in earlier classifications, again because of a growing occupation.    MILES FLETCHER  It's quite a good test this. If your mum asks you if you've got a proper job yet. If you can point to the standard occupational classification, I think that that'll answer the question for her quite satisfactory wouldn't it. By the way, recent additions are coffee shop workers, not surprisingly, given the huge growth in coffee serving establishments, what other ones have been officially designated recently?    DAVID FREEMAN  Lots of jobs linked around the internet and web development and website development as well. You go back 15 or 20 years and it didn't even exist. And things like ‘Play Workers’ as well, with the use of child minding and child play facilities, they’re also new additions to the list.    MILES FLETCHER  So, working in the gig economy, you know, the hours might be irregular, you might be on a zero hours contract, but nevertheless, chances are you're your job is officially recognised.    DAVID FREEMAN  Almost certainly, even if your job may not have an official designation, you would still be fitting into the framework somewhere.    MILES FLETCHER  And it might be worth noting since we're sitting in the ONS, that data analysts have only been recently recognised as an official classified occupation.  Well, just as important as finding out what people do is the whole question of how much they get for doing it. And who better to talk to about that than our Head of Earnings at the ONS Nicola White, how does the ONS find out what's on people's salary cheques every month.     NICOLA WHITE  We use several surveys to estimate wages. So, one is a monthly survey, which gives us the latest picture of what's happening, and the other is once a year, and this allows us to measure not only weekly earnings but also annual earnings, hourly earnings and it enables us to also look at detailed characteristics such as age, sex, region and occupation. It's a much richer data source.    MILES FLETCHER  Again, this is a big national level, thousands and thousands of people.    NICOLA WHITE  For the monthly survey, we ask to provide us with the number of employees in their business, and then what they're paying out in wages that month, and then we just calculate the average weekly earnings. The annual survey is slightly different. It's filled in again by businesses, but we ask for a selection of employees so that we can collect the additional data that we require.    MILES FLETCHER  So, we're not just trusting people to come clean about how much they're earning because I wonder if people might be concerned about what the tax authority might say.    NICOLA WHITE  As we collect this from businesses, we think the quality of the data might be much better than giving the individual data.  MILES FLETCHER  For statistical purposes, what is the average wage in the UK?  NICOLA WHITE  So, the average weekly earnings for all employees at the moment is around 565 pounds a week. Then if we include bonuses into this, it increases it to around 600 pounds a week.  MILES FLETCHER  And what’s been the trend recently?  NICOLA WHITE  It's been quite difficult to interpret earnings recently given the pandemic, and one reason for is because COVID has impacted the workforce. So many workers were on furlough or had their hours reduced during 2020 and 2021. And this meant that people saw their earnings fall, pushing down weekly earnings, but in the following year, fewer people were on furlough and hours returned to normal, so then weekly wages were higher. Making that year-on-year comparison was quite difficult to interpret. And adding to that, the actual makeup of the workforce during 2020 and 2021 changed and because our statistics is an average this will impact on the average. During the pandemic we saw that lower paid people were at a greater risk of losing their jobs. So where fewer people were in the workforce, this increased average earnings. The way I like to think about it is as thinking about height. So, if the shortest person in the room leaves, the average height of those remaining will rise, but no one in that room has got taller, have they. It's just the makeup of the people in the room that has changed the average, so if you think about that in terms of earnings, if someone's paid less than the average earnings per week, they then lose their job. Other things being equal, average earnings will increase and this was quite prominent during 2020 and 2021. But we're now seeing things return to normal levels.    MILES FLETCHER  Shaking out that furlough effect, if you like. Compared to pre pandemic levels, how do we stand now?    NICOLA WHITE  So at the moment, we're seeing when we compare to pay for this time, the latest papers are 12 months ago, we're seeing increases in regular pay, and in total pay which is regular pay plus bonuses. And we're seeing some high bonuses that have been paid out, particularly in March this year when we normally get the bonus months. We're seeing levels we haven't really seen before .  MILES FLETCHER  And what's been driving that then?    NICOLA WHITE  The main sectors that are contributing to this is the finance and business services sector, and within here are financial and insurance activities. That's banking, it's not unusual for these sectors to see large bonus payments, and they're just continuing to be quite large, although we did see some smaller bonuses paid during the pandemic. We've then seen this rise to levels we haven't really seen before.    MILES FLETCHER  And how disproportionate is the effect of these city slickers getting Ferraris?    NICOLA WHITE  If you look at the data split by private sector and public sector, you'll see public sectors very minimal bonus payments there, whereas it is all being driven by the private sector, and in particular the finance and insurance activity sector.    MILES FLETCHER  Any other sectors in which people have been getting bonuses?     NICOLA WHITE  Yes so there are other sectors such as manufacturing and construction and wholesale and trade. They've also been seeing quite large bonuses, particularly in March.    MILES FLETCHER  And that's perhaps a reflection of the shortages of appropriately trained and skilled workers in those industries, and employers are having to shell out extra to get people in.    NICOLA WHITE  Yeah, so bonuses are a way of retaining staff, and that will not impact on basic pay. They were not included in pay rises, but it’s a way to keep staff from moving on.    MILES FLETCHER  Overall then, of course real pay has suddenly become a talking point again. For years and years when inflation was relatively low it was a concept that wasn't discussed that much. Now inflation has gone back up and people are concerned about the real value of their earnings. Just talk us through how we measure that, and why it's so important.    NICOLA WHITE  Yes, we do produce a real average weekly earnings estimate which adjusts for inflation. So here we look at the growth rates of wages, and we then adjust this by the latest inflation rates. So as you've just said, inflation is currently very high, so it is having a big impact on real wage growth rates. Following the recent increases in inflation, pay has now clearly fallen in real terms, both including and excluding bonuses, so that’s excluding bonuses. Real pay is now dropping faster than any time that we've seen since records began in 2001.    MILES FLETCHER  What's the benchmark for the rate of inflation that the ONS uses?    NICOLA WHITE  So, we use the CPIH version of inflation. And that's what we adjust our estimates by.    MILES FLETCHER  Because the ONS believes that's the most reliable? If we were to take RPI, which of course we don’t recommend, the real base situation would look even more pronounced.    NICOLA WHITE  Inflation as measured by CPI, which at the moment is slightly higher than CPIH. This would have an even bigger impact on growth and real growth rates if we were to use CPI, which is often used by the Bank of England.    MILES FLETCHER  So Nic, another issue in recent years, of course, has been the gender pay gap, which we've heard a great deal and that's not, it's important to explain isn't it, it's not the difference between men and women getting different pay rates for doing the same work, because that's been illegal for some time. This is about women as a group being paid less than men as a group. How does the ONS measure that, and how have things been changing?    NICOLE WHITE  We use our annual survey to measure the gender pay gap, and what we do is we calculate the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women as a proportion of men's average earnings. For example, we'd say that the gender pay gap currently is at 7.9%. What this means is that women earn 7.9% less on average than men. If we had a negative gender pay gap, for example, negative 4%, this would mean that women earn 4% more on average than men. As you just said, it's not a measure of the difference of the same job being paid. It's a measure across all jobs in the UK.    MILES FLETCHER  But that’s all men, compared to all women. But if you start to break it down, then a slightly different pattern emerges, doesn't it?    NICOLA WHITE  Yeah, that's right. It's interesting to look at this by age group, because there's a clear difference for those aged over 40 and those aged under 40. With those full-time employees under 40, they have a gender pay gap of around 3%. And for those aged 40, this is around 12%. And this reflects the type of jobs and the fact that women have had children at that age.    MILES FLETCHER  So, it’s those family responsibilities, taking people out of their careers?    NICOLE WHITE  And maybe working more part-time. It's very much at the younger ages when the gender pay gap isn't as big, but as you go into those older age groups it does become more prominent.    MILES FLETCHER?  And perhaps there is an occupational skills divide as well?    NICOLE WHITE  Yes, there is. So looking at ‘occupay gap’ in this gender pay gap, the biggest gap is for processing and machine operatives, which is at 16.2%. Women earn 16.2% less on average than men, which probably you'd expect because these jobs are generally held by men. But if we look at this at the other end of the scale, so we'll look at the largest negative gender pay gap. This is in the occupation of secretarial and related, where women earn 7.4% more on average than men. So, the occupations kind of tie in with the kind of jobs that men and women do tend to do.    MILES FLETCHER  If I knew someone for whom the world of statistics had just become too exciting and they had to go work in a less dynamic field, but were out to make a bit more money, what should I recommend they do?    NICOLE WHITE  Okay, for full time employees, the highest paid occupations are chief executives and senior officials, and they're paid around about 90,000 pounds per year. The lowest occupation for full-time employees is playworkers, which includes teaching assistants, child minders and nannies, and these are paid around 14,000 pounds per year. But if you want to look at all employees, the highest occupation is still the same group, which is chief executives and senior officials. But the lowest paid occupation changes here, and it's more school mid-day and crossing patrol occupations. And these have a medium of around 3000 pounds per year. And this is because much of these jobs are part-time.    MILES FLETCHER  So that's what's going on with pay. But what's the current situation with employment in the labour market overall then, suffice to say, David, it's complicated really, isn't it?    DAVID FREEMAN  A very accurate description, I think complicated or a very mixed picture at the moment. As we touched on earlier, there are a lot of people who removed themselves from the labour market and go into economic activity, particularly in the over 50s age group. So that means it's held all the unemployment down a bit. There's also a record number of vacancies, which you would normally say is good news, but it's been at a record high for quite a while, so over 1.3 million vacancies and that for the first time is slightly more than the number of unemployed people. So that means companies are struggling to fill the jobs that are available particularly in things like the health sector, hospitality and the retail sector.    MILES FLETCHER  So that's speaks of skill shortages then isn't it, employers need people, but they haven't got the right people.    DAVID FREEMAN  Yes, if you haven’t got the right people, or not people in the right areas of the country, there's plenty of challenges there in trying to make sure that these jobs get filled and we find the right people in the right place. We're also seeing falling self-employment as well. This is the one area where we’re still lagging behind where we were before the pandemic started. So the number of employees has reached its pre pandemic level, but the number of self-employed is over three quarters of a million below where it was before COVID-19 struck. So that's again another challenge. Where have these people gone? Have they gone into inactivity or employment or are they struggling to restart their business after the pandemic.    MILES FLETCHER  Is that perhaps because of the disruptive effects of the pandemic, when it was easier for a lot of people to take one of the many jobs that are available rather than to go back into self-employment with all the risks and uncertainty that then implies.    DAVID FREEMAN   Potentially we have seen lots of people moving into employment and leaving self-employment over the pandemic period. I mean particularly with a lot of jobs that are offering flexible hybrid working, people are finding it much more constant, a bit more reliable than perhaps they were in their self-employed jobs. And lots of jobs in self-employment would have been hit by the pandemic. There were lots of jobs in construction, in catering and in the service sector, which would have been hit by the pandemic.    MILES FLETCHER  We said the picture was complicated, but anytime where we have record high employment and a record number of vacancies, there's good in this labour market too isn't there.     DAVID FREEMAN  There is some good news, they say the number of employees is back above where it was pre pandemic, so a lot of people in employment. What's holding it back is the self-employed. And, the level of unemployment is one of the lowest we've seen since the mid 70s. It's down below 4%. So, there are very few people out-of-work actively seeking work. That again shows there's certainly scope for the labour market to expand with the number of unfilled vacancies that we're seeing.    MILES FLETCHER  On that largely positive note, it's back to the daily grind we go. Thanks to Nicola and to David for joining me, and thanks to you for listening. To comment on this podcast or ask us a question please follow us on Twitter at @ONSfocus. I'm Miles Fletcher and our producers at the ONS are Julia Short and Steve Milne.  

In this episode Miles is joined by Dr James Tucker and Sarah Caul MBE to talk about how and why the Office for National Statistics count births and deaths, and what current fertility trends might mean for the future population. They look at the impact of popular culture on the most common baby names in England and Wales, and discuss the new significance of a dataset that was itself buried for 50 years.   Transcript:   MILES FLETCHER   I’m Miles Fletcher and this episode of ‘Statistically Speaking’, the official ONS podcast, is literally a matter of life and death. Specifically how and why we count births and deaths and what those numbers are telling us. We'll talk about the possible impacts of declining fertility rates in the UK and of children being born to older parents. And at the other end of life we'll look at the new significance of a dataset that was itself almost buried for 50 years I'm joined here at ONS by two people who lead on all our data around births and deaths - Head of Analysis in our health and life events teams, James Tucker, and our very own Head of Mortality, Sarah Caul MBE, honoured for her work during the pandemic about which we will talk later.   Starting with you then James, at the beginning as it were, with births - how does the ONS gather information about the number of children being born in England and Wales week in, week out?    JAMES TUCKER  So the registration of births is a service that's carried out by local registration services in partnership with the general register office in England and Wales and the good thing about this, from the perspective of having a really nice complete dataset, is that birth registrations are actually a legal requirement, giving us a really comprehensive picture of births in the countries.    MF  So we gather the numbers, we add them up, what do we do with the information then?    JT  So there's a couple of ways that we look at the data. One is to simply look at the number of births per year. So for example, we're looking at about 600,000 births per year at the moment. But an alternative approach is to use what we call the ‘total fertility’ rate, which is basically the average number of live children that women might expect to have during their childbearing lifespan. So it's a better measure than simply looking at the trends in the number of births because it accounts for changes in the size and age structure of the population.    MF  So it has a sort of multi-dimensional value then statistically that you can use to infer various things about the age at which people are likely to have children, and how many they're likely to have.    JT  That's exactly right. So we've seen some changes in the total fertility rate in recent years. So if you've heard the expression 2.4 children as describing the average number of children per family it's now considerably lower than that. In fact, it hit a record low in 2020 when the total fertility rate was 1.58.    MF  That's a sharp decline. In fact, though, you've got to go as far back as 1970, when the current series began, that's when it really was 2.4. What's really striking is if you look at that graph, the decline that happened between 1970 and about 1977 - very sharp decline there. Do we know what happened during that period? What were the factors driving that particularly?    JT  I think there can be all sorts of socio-economic factors affecting the fertility rate: improved access to contraception, reduction in mortality rates of children under five, which can result in women having fewer children. And also, more recently, as we've seen the average age of mothers going up, we might see some lower levels of fertility due to difficulties conceiving because of that postponement in childbearing.    MF  Sarah, I can see you want to come in on this.    SARAH CAUL  So my mother had three children by the time she was 30, and growing up I would just assume that that was the route I was going to take because it was what I've known. I am now 31 and I think if I was pregnant, that thought would scare me. I don't think I've grown up enough to have a child. I’m a dog mum, but those don't come into the statistics.    MF  So there was a bit of fanciful talk about people in lockdown finding - how should we put it delicately? - you know, things to do with their time, and that might lead to a boom in births. But that didn't really transpire?    JT  The increase in 2021 would actually coincide with conceptions across the second and third lockdowns. So yes, there was some speculation that people may have had enough of board games and were occupying their times in other ways, but I think it's actually more likely that it's a result of people delaying having children earlier on in the pandemic because of the uncertainty that was around at that point. And then towards the end of 2020 people had moved on from that and we saw a bit of an increase.    MF  Nonetheless though, historic data shows that there is a most common time of the year for conceptions to take place and that has something to do with the festive period, doesn't it?    JT  That's right. So the most common birthday is generally - almost always in fact - towards the end of September. So it doesn't take a statistician to work out that means the most popular time to conceive is over the Christmas and New Year periods. So that could be due to the Christmas festivities, but it might be also be something a bit less romantic than that. Some people, for example, might consider that there's an advantage to children being older in their year in school for example.    MF  The ONS also publishes the list of most popular baby names every year, and it is apparently one of the most downloaded and most popular bits of content on the ONS website. James, a lot of people scoff at this as an exercise. Is there any value in this list of baby names? Or is it something the ONS just produces because people like it?    JT  As you say it is one of our most popular releases and I think people use it to inform their own choices of names, and it can also tell us some really interesting things about culture in the country at the time. The top of the league table hasn't been that interesting, to be honest. So Oliver and Olivia have been the most popular names for the last few years, but it's beneath that that there's some really interesting trends emerging. So there's always a lot of interesting names that are going extinct. For example, last year, it was picked up a lot in the press about the name Nigel, which joined the list of critically endangered names like Gordon, Carol and Cheryl, and we do also see some really interesting influences of popular culture. And also royal babies always have a big influence. Some of the interesting ones from the last few years - we've seen some more Maeves and Otis’, which are characters from the TV series ‘Sex Education’, and even some Lucifers from the series of the same name. But generally you'd expect there to be positive associations with baby names so you do almost always see an influence of royal babies - we've already seen that with George but might be predicting a rise in Archies with Prince Harry’s son.    MF  And it’s quite interesting, seeing the cyclical thing with names that you might have associated with previous generations coming back into popularity, and Archie is a great example of that, isn't it? Sarah was one of the most popular girls names for a long time, certainly in the 80s and the 90s. But Sarah it's dropped out of the top 100 altogether.    SC  It has dropped down, but there's a Sarah in every single generation in my family. I think we're all named after each other. So my family is doing its best to keep it alive.     JT  Just a bit of a question for you. Where would you put the name Miles in the ranking?    MF  Well, it’s probably not in the top 100 James.    JT  Yeah, I'm afraid it's not quite top 100 material, but it is number 144. There were 390 Miles in 2020. And it's actually been on a bit of a roll recently. So that's the highest ranked it's been since 2002.    MF  Perhaps it’s the growing popularity of this podcast James, or maybe something else at work. Anyway... One thing worth noting about this before we move on, it should be pointed out that producing the baby names list is not an expensive exercise for the ONS.    JT  No, the data is very straightforward to collect. It's just a matter of compiling it into something that can be easily accessible and interesting for people to look at.    MF  And it's also one of the reasons that we don't compare the spelling of different names, because there's this long running thing isn't there about how if you added up the different spellings of the name Muhammad, then that would be the most popular boys name in England. That's not something the ONS does because, quite simply, we're just seeing the spelling that people enter on the system.    JT  Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think increasingly that could become even more of a task to compile those, because we're seeing an increasing use of shortened versions of names or alternative spellings. And if we were to try to compile those into one then that would definitely increase the time that we spent on it.    MF  Well, there you are, everything you need to know about baby names and - more seriously - the measurement of births and fertility. Plenty more information of course on the ONS website.    With that, we must turn to the other end of life, and that is measuring deaths - a topic which has been very much in the news for the last couple of years since the outbreak of the pandemic. Right at the centre of that has been my colleague Sarah Caul, who's sat with us this afternoon. Sarah, you're recognised for your achievements during that period with an MBE, official honour, which you collected from Windsor Castle.    SC  It was definitely very surprising. I wasn't expecting it, but I'm very thankful for it. It's quite a proud moment in my life. If you ever see my mum, she'll just scream at you: “My daughter’s got an MBE”, so that's always nice.    MF  Recognised now then as an authority in this area - it's fair to say that the ONS was publishing this list of weekly deaths very quietly, almost unnoticed, for many years. And then of course, sadly, that changed at the start of the pandemic.    SC  With ‘weekly deaths’ it did have a small audience, to the point where they were considering actually not publishing it anymore. Pre-pandemic it wasn't a very large part of my job, because it was just something very quick and easy to do. My main analysis would be on annual data - we release annual data the summer after the end of the reference period. We would look at different causes of death and see where we could investigate further to help monitor the picture of what people are dying from, and if that can be prevented.    MF  That all changed of course March / April 2020 with the arrival of COVID-19.    SC  We started quite early thinking of what we could do with COVID and we added just one line into the spreadsheet, which was the number of deaths. It went from something like five to over 100 in one week and we were like “okay, we have to do a lot more of this now”. It just grew bigger and bigger because we were having more and more deaths and we needed to get out, as quick as possible, as much information as we could. We would be doing something that would usually take us months to do in a matter of days, every week. And we're actually still doing it to the same level now because we are still seeing COVID death - it hasn't completely gone away.     MF  Incredible demand for information from government, from everybody, of course - desperately concerned about what was happening. There was suddenly this incredible focus and attention, and huge pressure, on you to get those numbers out very quickly.    SC  Those first few months were quite a blur, because we were publishing weekly and monthly and were constantly adapting and constantly trying to figure out what people were interested in seeing. And getting that information out into the public domain is probably the most challenging time that I've had here. I don't think I've ever worked at that pace before. But we have got so many experts in the health analysis and life events area that we're in. We had expert coders, experts in different causes of death. It was great to see everybody come together and work really well together. Despite the enormous amount of pressure, we were having to deliver things that would normally take us months in days, and sometimes hours.    MF  Your team were actually among the first to see the full impact, because there wasn't so much testing going on among people who have been infected. And it was in those mortality figures that the real impact was first being revealed.    SC  It wasn't until our death certificate information came out, because testing was so limited in the early days, that you could kind of see the impact, and see how quickly it was increasing.    MF  How do we gather those numbers?    SC  So when somebody dies, the informant - or family member usually - will register the death, usually within five days, but depending on if it needs to go to a coroner, it could take months or even years to register that death. And we don't know about a death until it is registered. When that information gets put through all of the causes of death listed on the death certificate comes through to us at the same time with an assigned underlying cause of death, as well as contributory cause of death. So we have all of that information on each and every death registered in England and Wales.    MF  And it's very important to understand you can have more than one cause of death because this is very relevant to understanding how many people might actually have died because of COVID.    SC  The majority of deaths, regardless of cause, have more than one cause listed on the death certificate because you have complications, and one cause could lead to another cause. So the way we categorise it is deaths ‘due to’ COVID - where COVID was the underlying cause of death or any other condition - and then deaths ‘involving’ it - so where it was mentioned on the death certificate as the underlying cause or a contributory factor.    MF  Do you think a lot of people were actually confused by that?    SC  One of the things that people struggled to understand sometimes during the pandemic was that this is a different number to the public health measure. So somebody could test positive for COVID-19 but not have COVID-19 on the death certificate, because it didn't contribute to the death. So the example that gets told quite a lot is if somebody tests positive and then gets hit by a bus, it's very unlikely that COVID will be mentioned on the death certificate.    MF  And that's absolutely vital in understanding how many people have died ‘from’ COVID as opposed to a death ‘involving’ COVID.    SC  Yeah, so it's very important. The public health measure’s great because it's really fast, and it gives us a more instant knowledge of what's happening. Our statistics come out about 11 days later, but it's where COVID contributed to the death, and not just was present time of death    MF  That helps us to really understand what the mortality impact of COVID-19 has been so far.    SC  It is really important. So from the start of the pandemic to the week ending 13th of May, we know there's about 195,000 death certificates that had COVID on them, and that's the whole UK as we've worked with colleagues in Northern Ireland and Scotland to bring a UK figure together, as usually we only report on England and Wales. And then that enabled us to do further investigations about who was most at risk of dying from COVID. And we did a lot by age, place of death and any breakdowns we thought possible to try and help identify those most at risk.    MF  Another great strength you might say of the ONS numbers is the comprehensive nature of the way the information is gathered centrally and reported very quickly. And that was evident during the pandemic when you saw the UK numbers coming along and influencing policy decisions really quite rapidly, compared to similar countries around the world. Central to that is the whole concept of ‘excess deaths’. That's a good objective measure of impact, regardless of what doctors have written on the death certificate. Sarah, tell us how that works, particularly what is its statistical value, and what's it been saying?    SC  We use ‘excess deaths’, which is the number of deaths we see in a period compared to what we would expect - and to get the expected number we use an average of the previous five years. By doing this, it takes into account the direct and indirect impact of COVID, so we have a fuller measure. It's really useful as well for international comparisons, because we're not relying on everybody recording deaths in the same way. It's just a straightforward “how many deaths above what we would expect are we seeing?”    MF  And what has it shown so far - what has been the impact on excess deaths?    SC  So we've seen quite a high number of excess deaths during the pandemic. In 2020, we saw over 75,000 more deaths than we were expecting originally. In 2021 that is lower - we saw around 54,000 deaths more than we'd expect. And currently to date for 2022 we are seeing the number of deaths slightly below what we'd expect looking at our five year average.    MF  Do we know yet - at the least the early indications - for what this might all mean for life expectancy?    SC  We have released some life expectancy statistics for 2018 to 2020 as we do three-year combined, and we do see a bit of a dip in the last year because of the high number of deaths in 2020, which was due to the pandemic. We're still seeing the numbers are significantly higher than at the start of our time period, which was 2001 to 2003. Somebody in England in 2018 to 2020 would live to about 79 years as a male, or 83 years as a female. Whereas in 2001 to 2003 it was more like 76 years old for males and 81 years old for females.    MF  So in recent history we've seen these really quite pronounced increases in life expectancy for men and women.    SC  People are living longer. It’s increased more for males than it has for females. It's reducing that inequality gap, because we do see that women do tend to live longer.    MF  Do we know why men are catching up with women in terms of life expectancy? Is it lifestyle, nature of work perhaps?    SC  There is a lot more of a decline in heart diseases, and especially in males, so I think that could indicate healthier choices, which would then increase somebody's life expectancy.    MF  Another important concept when understanding how the ONS looks at mortalities is the whole question of ‘avoidable deaths’. So how does that work and what is it been telling us?    SC  So ‘avoidable mortality’ is defined as a cause of death that is either preventable - so for example COVID and appendicitis is included in this – or are treatable - so this would be different types of cancer. For those aged under 75 in 2020, 22.8% of all deaths in Great Britain were considered avoidable. This is around 153,000 deaths out of 672,000. The categories where we've seen the biggest increase since the start of our time series was alcohol and drug related disorders, which is the only group of causes where the mortality rate is significantly higher in 2020 when compared to 2001. But the biggest driver of avoidable mortality would be the cancers.    MF  So those figures for avoidable death might suggest then that there is still considerable disparity in life expectancy between different groups.    SC  So we see through our data that those living in the most deprived areas have a substantially higher rate of death from avoidable causes - with deaths due to COVID-19, drugs and alcohol being notably higher in the most deprived areas. Avoidable deaths accounted for 40% of all male deaths in the most deprived areas of England, compared to 18% in the least deprived areas in 2020. And then we see the difference again for females. It was 27% of deaths in 2020 in the most deprived areas, and then 12% in the least deprived areas. So this gap in avoidable mortality between the most and least deprived areas - it's actually at its highest level since 2004 for males, and since the data began in 2001 for females.    MF  James what are the factors that are driving those disparities which are, on the face of it, pretty serious?    JT  The difference between the most and least deprived areas is one of the most striking statistics we produce actually. And I think it really shows the importance of looking beyond those top level figures. And that's the ability we have here to look at the minute detail of the data. I mean, there's all sorts of factors that can go into life expectancy. So there are things like access to health care, nutritional aspects - there's plenty of things that can drive that gap, but it's really, really striking and definitely needs looking into.    MF  What's the direction of our work in this area? Because for some areas are we not seeing actually a sustained reversal of life expectancy, not just shorter life expectancy, but one that's actually getting shorter.    JT  I think you mentioned earlier Miles about how this mortality data had kind of risen from obscurity I think. During the COVID pandemic the spotlight has been shone on deaths and Coronavirus itself, but really there's going to be a period where we're really going to have to make best use of that data to look at the indirect effects of Coronavirus as well. So, take for example just within the pandemic we saw a big increase in alcohol related deaths in 2020, and that tallies with other research that shows that patterns of drinking have changed during that time with heavy drinkers drinking more. So beyond the pandemic as well - we're looking at things like delays to treatment times for certain diseases. So there’s plenty of analysis still to do on the impacts of the pandemic.     MF  Deep in the recesses of the ONS data though, the causes of deaths that are recorded - some of them are, you have to say, they're unusual, they're quite remarkable. Sarah, can you give me some examples of some of the most unusual deaths that have been recorded?    SC  So I’ve got a few of the least common causes of death, and I don't want to scare anyone - the numbers that I've got here are over an eight year period, so they're very rare. So I don't know if you want to see if you can take a guess at how many people are ‘bitten or stung by non venomous insects and other non venomous arthropods’?    MF  People attacked by bees and wasps, that kind of thing.    SC  Not because they're venomous, but because of the incident themselves.    MF  Well I'd like to think there was a very small number. I don't know - over an eight year period - hopefully less than 50 or so?    SC  It was less than 50. It was 12 - which is more than I was expected. Another one we have is ‘fall involving ice skates, skis, roller skates, or skateboards’?    MF  Can be very dangerous. I don't know, 5?    SC  Three! Very good guess. I for some reason thought it would be more than being bitten or stung by an insect. We've got ‘victim of lightning’?    MF  Rare again. Highly unusual. I don't know... 10?    SC  Seven! You're quite good at the guesses. I’m very impressed.     MF  You know, you hang around the ONS long enough and you start to get a feel for these things. What do we think is the most unusual cause of death that we've recorded?    SC  We've got a lot that only have one death. One of the ones that springs to mind is ‘bitten by rat’. I did expect more people to die from that than some of the other ones we've got, like ‘contact with powered lawnmower’. But I guess that's quite a dangerous thing to do, especially if you're like me and start doing it in your flip flops. So yeah, dangerous.    MF  Definitely not recommended.   So we've looked at births and we've looked at deaths. But what's the balance between the two at the moment, James, and what's the impact on our population of all this overall?    JT  Population change is driven by the number of live births and the number of deaths and the balance between those, but also the migration that takes place each year. So the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths is a component known as ‘natural change’. Over the last decade or so, although we've generally seen more births than deaths, we've actually seen a narrowing of the gap. So all else being equal, that means that the population growth will slow. Also, we did actually see a blip in 2020 when for the first time for a while the deaths exceeded births, but that's going to be due to the very high number of deaths that we sadly had from Coronavirus in that year.    MF  And that was highly unusual - the first time in many years we've seen that.    JT  Yes, that's right. So the general trend has been more births than deaths and we've seen a return to that in 2021.    MF  Well, there we are, proof that the ONS really does cover us from the cradle to the grave.  ‘Statistically Speaking’ comes to you from the Office for National Statistics. I’m Miles Fletcher, thank you very much for listening. Join us for the next episode, which you can hear by subscribing to this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms.   Our producers at the ONS are Julia Short, and Steve Milne.    ENDS 

Our topic this time, and it's a big one, is the economy. The science of measuring rapid change in a complex, globalised and now increasingly turbulent economic situation. In this episode Miles is joined by second permanent secretary Sam Beckett, and head of inflation, Mike Hardie, to look at how the ONS is keeping on top of rising prices, and how two of the biggest economic shocks in recent history have helped shape the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) current approach to collecting its key economic data.    TRANSCRIPT:   Miles Fletcher Sam, one angle I'd like to explore with you is the extent to which everything has changed recently, and the way that the ONS measures the UK economy, the extent to which that was informed by the experience of what happened 14 years ago now and the financial crisis. Could you talk us through what happened there in terms of the ability of the statistical system to actually spot what was going on? And what lessons were learned during that period?    Sam Beckett  Yes, certainly. That is going back quite a while now, isn't it? But I think one of the key things that you can really compare and contrast with where we are now compared to then, is about the timeliness of GDP. Back at the time of the global financial crisis the Office for National Statistics was very slow to spot the turning point. We were dealing with crucial data for the economy's output. And it was probably about six months before we were able to sort of scale the downturn in the economy and see the economy going into recession.    MF  Meanwhile, during that period, of course, people were being hit quite badly by that economic downturn. But the official statistics that were available had nothing to say about what was happening.    SB  No, that's right. So we would have been waiting to find out the extent of the downturn as people were seeing it hit their livelihoods, for something like six months back in 2008. If you fast forward then to the experience that we've had over the pandemic. You know, our monthly GDP statistics are out about six weeks after the period they refer to so you're getting a very timely indicator on what is happening to the real economy now. So you can really compare a sort of six months gap to a six weeks gap now. And if you think about the way the pandemic played out with, you know, the economy being closed down to try and limit transmission and then opened up again successively, and in the waves, if we'd been waiting three months or six months to find out what was happening, it really would have been a hopeless situation. But we got those very timely official statistics on GDP, but not only those but even more timely statistics from business surveys, and opinions and lifestyle surveys that we've done, where we can actually get a two week turnaround on what is happening to the economy and how people are responding.   MF  So it was really a question of learning from that experience and putting in place the kind of mechanisms that can help us as a country to actually find out what was going on closer to the point it was actually happening out there in the real world. Has the rest of the world learned that lesson as well, or is the UK among countries that have been quicker onto this do you think?    SB  We're certainly one of only a handful of countries that publish a monthly GDP figure. So I think in that big kind of headline and official statistic, we're still in a relatively select group that publish as frequently as monthly and as close to the time. We're also looking at financial card transactions data; we are looking a lot at admin data on the labour force, and trying to bring together a host of statistics that shine a light on what is going on, on the ground during the economy. And I think we count ourselves amongst a relatively small group of national statistical institutes that are cutting edge in their use of innovative data sources.    MF  So by the time the pandemic then comes along, two years ago now, the ONS is in a better state to actually find out what's happening, but nevertheless, was there a certain extent to which the organisation had prepared for another downturn like 2008, rather than what actually happened which nobody had foreseen, a widespread pandemic including a serious risk to life?    SB  Indeed, I mean, who would have thought that you know, we would have been hit by a pandemic of such a global scale and impact? I think one of the things that is a huge advantage for the government and the UK economy has been to have this objective handle on the level of infection out in the community. And that is something that the Office for National Statistics signed up to deliver really early on in the pandemic. So, our COVID infection survey, which has now swabbed millions of people on their doorstep, gave us a great handle on just how many people have had COVID, not just relying on the data of people who were turning up at doctors and hospitals, who had symptoms already. So you know, the COVID infection survey was a more random sample of the community and gave us that objective handle on how many people had COVID and indeed, some of them asymptomatic, you know, no symptoms of COVID but tested positive on the doorstep and that gave us a great insight over the pandemic and helped advise the government on what should be done to try and limit transmission.    MF  So meanwhile, as well as setting up that very important survey, there were a lot of other very quick changes that were put in place as well to measure the economic impact, the impact on individuals, on businesses as well. Can you talk us through some of the work that was done there to give that very quick turnaround, the fast indicators, that quick view of how items in the shops are being affected; how people in the workforce were being affected; and how the country and the effects of lockdown - to what extent they were actually hitting the economy in real time?    SB  I mean, starting with those quick turnaround surveys, there's two really that are really good companions to each other. The first is the business insights and conditions survey - and that surveys about 40,000 businesses and asks them questions around, you know, what is happening to their customer base, what is happening to their workforce. And there's about a two-week turnaround on that information. So, we could ask questions of businesses about how many of their staff, for example, they were intending to put on furlough and get that information just two weeks later to give us a handle on what a big uptake there would be on that scheme. The companion one is the opinions and lifestyle survey and through that we were able to ask people things like were they wearing a mask when they went to the shops? You know, were they staying at home as per the guidance and what were they leaving the home to do? And you know, were they washing their hands more and all those non pharmaceutical interventions that were so important in controlling the early stages of the pandemic. And again, between that sort of survey of households and individuals and businesses, you could track those two sides of how the pandemic and the government's measures to control it were impacting on people's lives and livelihoods.    MF  So in the old world of statistics, where paper forms would have been sent off, we'd have been able to produce an estimate in, ooh I don't know, a couple of months. But actually with the onset of the pandemic, this information was being fed into government, directly into government within a matter of a few days and informing that response, the actual action that was being taken on the ground.    SB  Absolutely. And I think also looking at some of our more traditional statistics, there had to be huge effort to keep the show on the road. Labour market statistics, I mean, incredibly important, over a period of economic turbulence, we had to go from what had been a face to face survey to a telephone based survey. And we reinforced that picture by getting information from payrolls from HMRC’s PAYE database, to understand what was happening to the labour market and keep that total picture, even though our standard survey had to move rapidly to a telephone based one. But I should add, you know, when people think about that admin data, I would like to emphasise that we're incredibly careful that none of that would identify anything about individuals. And we're extremely careful to ensure that we don't collect data that we don't need and that everything is de-identified.    MF  And that's a very important point now, because it's not just a question of people taking part in surveys is it? It's about the ONS having relationships with the credit card companies, for example, with mobile phone providers as well. And while these huge datasets give a fantastic up to the minute picture of of what's going on - money being spent and how movement is being affected as well - people are going to be understandably concerned about government having access to that sort of data. So how do we ensure that that is working in the public interest, only producing information that's genuinely needed for the public good?     SB  Our reputation rides on treating people's data incredibly carefully, and by abiding by all the regulations that are appropriate to personal data and business data. So we're incredibly scrupulous and careful in this regard. We don't gather data that can identify people if it is not needed, and we have got very reliable methods to de-identify data before we use it for analysis or indeed publish it. So you know, that's incredibly important to maintaining public trust in our statistics.    MF  So what have we been doing to try and measure the individual impacts that some of the price rises we've seen recently have had on households with different incomes?    SB  We are facing a period of some time to come where I think this is going to be incredibly high profile in the public debate about the challenges of the economy and what people are facing and indeed of measurement for us as an office of statistics. What we've been doing is trying to think about ways in which you can dig under that very average national figure of inflation. Now that is going up and most forecasters, such as the Bank of England will expect it to go up further, but it does, as you say, fail to show how different people can be impacted. You know, if they drive a lot and the cost of fuel has gone up a lot, relatively poor households spend a high proportion of their money on energy bills and on food and we know that both of those categories have been affected. So we have published some statistics that seek to look at inflation cut by different income brackets of households.    MF  Given that there is now so much data from supermarket scanners, from credit cards, from an incredible range of digital sources. What are the limits of all this do you think?    SB  Data is a by-product of the productive economy these days, isn't it? You know, data is being produced in all the other activities that we undertake online in our lives. So along with that, computing power has got so much cheaper and you put those two things together, and you just have this enormous capacity to measure activity in so many different ways, and so much more up to date, I mean, compared to anything we could have done, instead of 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, and the cost of them has come down massively. And with that, the sort of potential to get insight from them has expanded.    MF  Now we’ve mentioned GDP several times of course – that’s Gross Domestic Product - the traditional very long-established way of measuring activity in the economy. And it's held by many still to be the single most important national economic statistic. But at the same time, there's a debate going on at the moment about the continuing usefulness and relevance of GDP, particularly as it takes no account of the environmental dimension as well. And of course, in this country and internationally, that environmental dimension and climate change has become evermore important. So what are we doing as an organisation to factor the environment into the economic picture?    SB  GDP is an important measure of the productive economy. I think it's here to stay. But even in terms of it measuring the productive economy we're continually trying to improve its quality and make it more timely as we've talked about, but also more granular, you know, get more of a sense of what is happening down at a more granular level of geography. What we're trying to do is develop further, all aspects of our kind of economic welfare measures and bring things into the kind of spotlight that GDP has that are really important to all our futures. And I think, you know, climate and net zero, and those environmental statistics are one area where we're working really hard to try and give them a due prominence. I mean, we are relatively far ahead of international averages in terms of our level of development here. We've been publishing natural capital accounts for some 10 years. So we're starting from a good base, but there's so much more we can do. So, we've got two strands of work here. First, we've got an approach which tries to extend that concept of GDP, the production and asset boundaries that it measures to natural capital in the environment, as you've mentioned, but also human capital, as well. You know, the extent to which the skills of the UK workforce are being enhanced, and other aspects of economic activity, which currently fall outside of GDP, like household production, like unpaid for household work, which also really ought to be in your concept of how productive you are as an economy. So, we're developing this suite of measures that sort of extends the national accounts into these harder to measure areas that we also know are really important to our sense of economic progress and prosperity as a nation. And so that's that sort of integrated set of extending the concept of GDP to these broader concepts. But also, alongside that, we are doing some things that are a little bit more tactical and fleet of foot. They have a framework to them, like our Climate Statistics Portal, but that brings together all kinds of climate statistics from across government into a kind of one stop shop for users to explore things like climate and weather and emissions by different area, impacts and mitigations and provide insights from that. Now, not in a way that you can really aggregate with the GDP number, but in a way that would give you sort of broad insight as to progress towards net zero and what is happening to our climate and weather. So, this is a huge agenda. We call it the ‘Beyond GDP’ agenda, something where we are a relatively leading internationally but so much more work that we can do. We've got some really interesting stuff coming out later this month that will look at some of these issues and you can obviously catch up with that on our website.    MF  So much more change still to come. Finally, Sam Beckett, a very wise economist once said  - slightly tongue in cheek – that the chief function of economic forecasting is to make astrology seem respectable. Do you think the point will come at ONS when the data becomes so good and so rapid, that actually the ONS could get into the whole business of forecasting the economy with a great deal of accuracy?    SB  Well, I think we are increasingly getting up to the moment, if I can put it like that in terms of our economic statistics. Yes, there's still some time lag between the observation and the publication of the data in in most cases, but we're getting closer and closer. And we are using techniques where even where some data might be missing, we can use sophisticated economic modelling techniques to bring it up to date. So, a good example there would be if we didn't have a full local breakdown of GDP data for last month, we could make up for that using what we know about the other areas, and how they changed in GDP, and also the past performance of the missing areas. So, we can put together this picture that brings things really up to date using some of those modern techniques. I think the world of measurement is different from the world of forecasting, quite fundamentally. And, you know, we leave that to colleagues at the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England, who do kind of look ahead and try and paint that future picture. But the two are interconnected. And I think you can only produce good forecasts, if you've got really reliable readings on what is happening now and what past trends have been. So, they are hand in glove and I wouldn't want to say those were two distinct but we do have our own particular objective, which is about you know, economic and societal measurement. We're not yet in that forecasting game. But we are bringing it as up to the minute as possible.    MF  So, while not actually trying to predict the future, at least we can measure the very, very recent past. Sam, thank you very much for speaking to me.    Now, after decades of relatively low inflation, rising prices are back in the news. Tracking the impact of that on households is of course, vitally important work and at the ONS, that's the responsibility of the head of inflation, Mike Hardie.     Well, Mike, anyone who follows the news and particularly recently with concern about the rising cost of living will understand the importance of inflation. But there are lots of different measures of it. Can you talk us through the different ways in which ONS measures inflation, and why each of them is significant?    Mike Hardie  So we have a range of inflation measures. The first family of statistics are consumer price statistics. And so we have the consumer prices index which most people will be familiar with and the consumer prices index including owner occupied housing costs, and they are our macro economic measures of inflation that are based on economic principles. We also have a second group of statistics which are called the household cost indices, and they are specifically designed to measure the changing costs and prices faced by different household groups. And that completes our family a consumer price statistics. And then beyond those, we produce business prices. So those measure what we describe as output or ‘factory gate’ prices. So those are the prices of goods leaving the factory gate and we also produce input prices as well. So all of the component parts that are used in the production process to produce a final product, how the price of those has changed over time, too. And that completes our business statistics. And then beyond that, we also produce house prices as well, which is very topical at the moment given the buoyant housing market in the UK.    MF  And underlying all those different measures of inflation is a very large data gathering operation. Now, there's a lot of change going on in that area at the moment, but first of all, describe for us how this traditionally has been done.    MH  Traditionally, in order to produce our consumer price statistics, we have sent price collectors out across the UK. We have over 300 price collectors, they go to over 140 different locations in the UK, with mini clipboards, and they go into stores and they price a range of different items. So at the start of the year, we construct a large shopping basket, a virtual shopping basket, which is based on what UK consumers spend their money on. And there's a list of approximately 700 different items. And we send the price collectors out to collect information on those items. And we also have some collection within the ONS as well. So we have a couple of teams that go online and collect a wide range of prices too. We also have some admin data as well. So for example, we get admin data on how the price of insurance has changed. And then we aggregate all of that data together to construct our consumer price statistics.    MF  Rail fares of course are always a big driver of inflation as well. Where does that come from at the moment?    MH  So that comes directly from the uplift that consumers face every year. So, when rail fares are increased on an annual basis, we capture that increase in our inflation measures. But one of the developments that we're actually undertaking at the moment is to move to using data from the rail delivery group. So that's essentially a census of all rail journeys in the UK. So, it gives us a much more detailed picture of how rail prices are changing across the country.    MF  So, we have groups of people out with clipboards, moving up and down the aisles in the supermarket; people looking at the web; some companies like rail companies, obviously providing information about their fares. But was that sufficient to provide a really good accurate measure of inflation or was it felt that there was much more that can be done    MH  So, it was sufficient to provide a high -level accurate measure of inflation. These are economy wide averages that we publish on a monthly basis. We're moving away from the manual collection that I described, where we send price collectors out into stores, where we are working with a number of leading retailers to get access to their electronic point of sale data. So, whenever you go to a supermarket for example, and spend money on your weekly shop, that information is captured by the retailer. We have a number of partnerships in place. Co-Op are one of the retailers that are happy to be named, where we get information directly from their supermarket tills directly to our systems at ONS, and we can use that data then instead of sending people into stores to compile our inflation estimates. And that data is extremely detailed. So, when we send people into store obviously there's cost implication to that. And they collect prices of narrowly defined items. So, they may for example, go in to collect the price of a loaf of bread off the shelf - we try to price the most commonly available item. What the electronic point of sale data will give us is a census of all of the prices within that store, and more importantly, not just the prices, but how much of each product have been purchased by consumers. So that fixed basket approach that I mentioned, where we set the basket at the start of the year, that will change likely for areas of the basket where we're using these new data sources, because it'll essentially be a dynamic basket that updates every month because we will have a summary of what consumers are spending their money on in real time which is really exciting.    MF  That's a real step change in approach then. How does the UK compare - are other countries doing this, moving away from the traditional approach into this much more dynamic and data driven way of setting inflation?    MH  It’s the general direction of travel. So other National Statistics Institute such as the Netherlands and Australia have been doing this. It's really difficult to do, because utilising those new data sources such as scanner data requires the development of new methods, and also new systems as well. So just to give you an idea of the size of some of these data sources. We currently use around 200,000 price quotes to compile our consumer price statistics every month at the moment. And it's likely we'll be moving to several hundreds of millions of prices every month. So, we need to change our systems in order to manage the sheer size of the data essentially.    MF  This really is big data in action.   MH  It is really exciting and gives you additional insights into changing consumer spending patterns and how prices are evolving across the UK economy.    MF  Does that mean the annual updating of the basket of goods - which is always quite a popular occasion as we look to see what's in and what’s out - is that going to go then?    MH  Not in the short term. So, there are specific areas of the basket that we're targeting with these new data sources.  I've mentioned groceries, we've also touched on rail fares already and also used cars. But for the remainder of the basket, we will use traditionally collected data, so sending people out into stores and data that we've received directly and collect at ONS. So, we will still need to update that basket to reflect wider consumer spending patterns. Also, if you think about groceries, we have these new data sources for larger retailers. But in order to ensure that our statistics remain representative of price changes in the economy, we also need to capture prices from smaller retailers as well.  Some of them won't have the facilities to provide us with data - so there will still be an element of manual collection.    MF  Now all this change - and very exciting change too - comes at a time of heightened concern about the rising cost of living and also the frequently expressed opinion that what appears to be the headline rate of inflation doesn't actually reflect people's own experience of rising prices that they face, particularly recently in the supermarket. How has the ONS been responding to that?    MH  So, the inflation measures that most people are familiar with such as the consumer price index is an average and when you dig into that average there will be some variation. So, everyone has their own personal rate of inflation depending on what you spend your money on. So, in terms of how we responded as an organisation, you can go on to the ONS website, and use our personal inflation calculator and outline what you were spending your money on every month. And based on that spending pattern we can work out your personal rate of inflation and how that compares to the headline. We're also undertaking some work on a set of measures called the household cost indices. And these are designed to measure the changing costs and prices faced by different household groups. So, you can break down those statistics into income decile you can break them down to expenditure decile, households with or without pensioners, and with or without children. So, you can see how changing prices and costs are affecting different household groups. And another piece of work that we're doing at the moment that’s particularly interesting is we are aiming to publish over the next month a low cost index. So, this has been widely covered in the media, where some consumers who purchase value brands in supermarkets are being forced to move to more expensive brands because those value brands are no longer available. So, what we are looking at is for the price of those lower priced products when people are forced to move to higher priced products, what that means for price changes and the implications for the household budget on a weekly basis. So that's another piece of work that we're doing to provide further insights into the recent rise in the cost of living and how that's impacting different groups of people.    MF  And that could shed important light on people's actual experience of shopping when they find out that the cheap packet of pasta they used to buy simply isn't there anymore.    MH  Yeah, so one of the fundamental principles of a price index is that we control for quantity and quality changes over time, because we want to isolate that price change. So, what you've just described there wouldn't necessarily be captured by a price index, but it obviously has implications for people in terms of the household budget. So, we're looking at producing, you know, a range of supplementary statistics to complement our headline measures of inflation, to provide insights into these types of changes, which are having an impact on people's household budget.    MF  Now one of the big debates, one of the big issues surrounding the measurement of inflation in recent years, has of course been the retail prices index. Tell us a little bit about that - the criticisms of the RPI as a statistic, as a measure of inflation, and how ONS has responded to that.    MH  So we currently produce the retail prices index as a legacy measure of inflation. Our position on this statistic has been clear for some time. We think it is a poor measure of inflation, that tends to over or underestimate inflation. And we don't think it has the potential to become a good measure either. And if you were to address all of the shortcomings of the retail prices index, you move close to our headline measure of inflation, which is the CPIH, which is the consumer prices index including owner occupiers housing costs. So, we made a proposal to bring the data sources and methods from the CPIH into the RPI and that is due to take place in 2030. But we only produce it currently as a legacy measure as we acknowledge as an organisation that it is used for a wide variety of purposes across the economy.    MF  So, we've had the CPI measure of inflation for quite some time. It's very important of course, it's used by the Bank of England to target the reduction of inflation. It's also used very widely around Europe. But it doesn't include that measure of housing costs. Why is it so important to include housing costs as an element? What are the challenges of measuring that given that some people live in their own houses and other people rent them? That's the problem isn't it - trying to measure how those costs are changing for different people.    MH  It's a large part of people's expenditure every month. So, it's essential that it is reflected in our inflation measures. It's conceptually quite challenging to measure. So, we use an approach called rental equivalence and we use rental prices as a proxy for owning and maintaining and living in your own home. And we have very detailed information for the valuation office agency, which we use to compile our measure of owner occupiers housing costs.    MF  And that comes up essentially within a notional figure of what it would cost you to rent your own home.    MH  Essentially, and this is the direction of travel internationally as well. So other NSIs are moving towards using a measure including owner occupiers housing costs. At the moment, the consumer prices index is the Bank of England's inflation target and is widely covered in the media every month, but our aim in the medium term is to move our stakeholders towards using the CPI.    MF  Looking into the future then, a lot of exciting changes going on. And we continue to report inflation on a monthly basis. Can you see the time when perhaps there might be a more frequent reporting of inflation, perhaps even coming down to weekly or even daily?    MH  That is possible with the new data sources - we could produce more timely estimates. Producing our inflation statistics on a monthly basis is really challenging. It's quite a tight timetable, you know, to send price collectors out to bring in all admin data sources, and in future, the scanner data that we've discussed, as well. So, there's quite a tight turnaround. So, it's very likely that CPI and CPIH will continue to be produced on a monthly basis, but it is possible that we could produce supplementary statistics that are maybe more timely, but our focus at the moment is improving our headline measures of inflation.    MF  Inflation in the news, as it hasn't been for many years at the moment - you must be very conscious of the impact that your numbers have when they come out. Describe for us the importance of the work that you're doing.    MH  Well inflation statistics impact pretty much every aspect of UK society. They’re used to uprate pensions, government guilts, student loans, various benefits, taxes. So, we have a very low risk appetite in terms of transforming our statistics because it is absolutely essential that we get them right because the implications are enormous if we do not. And that's been one of the challenges in bringing in these new data sources and developing new methods and systems. We've had to move carefully. We're very ambitious, but it needs to be measured ambition, because we need to ensure that while transforming our consumer price statistics we get them right, and produce robust statistics that are used across the UK economy.     MF  Because once reported, there's no going back - there are no revisions to inflation are there?    MH  No, so RPI is an un-revisable index, so we do not revise. And for CPIH and CPI, there is some scope to revise the indices, but it would have to be extreme circumstances for us to do that. And thankfully, to date, we haven't had any errors in CPIH or CPI so we haven’t had to cross that bridge just yet.    MF  Thank you for listening to Statistically Speaking and please join us for our next episode, which is quite literally a matter of life and death. To ask a question or suggest ideas for future podcasts, please do so via our Twitter feed @ONSfocus. I'm Myles Fletcher and our producers at the ONS are Steve Milne and Julia Short.    ENDS