BSC Annual Report Y/E February 2025.
The 4th Year of our activities as a Community Interest Company began with reporting on the successful seminar “Combating Climate Change, Where Are We With Net Zero? This one day event, held on 29th February 2024, in the magnificent surroundings of One Great George Street, had featured 14 presentations, including keynotes from Professor Piers Forster, Interim Chairman of the UK’s Climate Change Committee and Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. Professor Piers had reassured us that, essentially, the UK remained on track to achieve net- zero by the target date of 2050, although we were at that time only actually on target for 9 of the 50 separate aspects required to fulfil that aim. The importance of the objective was endorsed by Bob Ward’s ’s talk: “Misinformation about Net Zero”, focussing on the editorial in the Sunday Telegraph of 23rd July 2023 that had claimed the Act of Parliament creating the target of net-zero emissions by 2050, had not been properly considered, with some of the supporting evidence unproven. Bob provided specific evidence to refute each of the claims made in the editorial, implicitly endorsing many of the points the climate activist, Merle Gering, had made in his impassioned speech.
Now, almost 2 years after the event, writing this report coincident with COP30 in November 2025, there seems to have been little progress towards net-zero in the UK during the intervening period. The suggestion in Ehsan Masood’s talk that de-coupling growth from carbon emissions to create sustainable growth will be increasingly important to the UK economy has yet to materialise. Instead, Shaun Richards scenario seems to have had the greater influence over the period, with the cost of carbon based energy remaining competitive compared with the higher than expected costs of green energy, partly due to the intermittent reliability provided by a variable climate. Possibly this could have been predicted, given that the cost of living was the most important concern of the public as determined by the special poll conducted for the event by Opinium Research. Sir John Curtice had provided that information in the final talk of the day also highlighting the significant differences across the political spectrum as to how to tackle the net-zero issue.
The cost of living was also on our mind for our second public meeting of 2024, held on the 23rd May in the equally attractive surroundings of the Lady Violet Room at the National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place. So, for the third year running our topic was inflation, but this time we were concerned to review the more technical aspects hence “Inflation 2024 – Are we using the right measures?”
We were pleased to have Jill Leyland provide the welcome to this half-day event and to introduce Ed Humpherson, Director General of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) to take us through the regulatory issues in price statistics, focussing on the “three family” approach, with only the macroeconomic CPI and CPIH having accredited status. Ed’s informative talk included the question as to whether the multiplicity of indices actually serves the public good or do they risk confusion? In truth, Ed’s talk and the subsequent contributions failed to clarify the reasons for the multiplicity of measures and provided little justification for the focus on rail fares, second hand cars and rents. Probably the most important observation of the day came from Stephen Burgess of the ONS who confirmed that, ever since 2006, lower income households had experienced higher inflation than that indicated by both of the CPI and CPIH plutocratic measures. The source of the data had been the HCI’s, providing significant evidence for the opinion that the HCI’s are more appropriate than the CPIH as a replacement for the RPI in 2030. That opinion seemed to be the dominant view of those attending the meeting.
Meanwhile, probably the most important event of the year was the publication of the report of Professor Lievesley’s Independent Review of the UK Statistics Authority on 12th March 2024. This had included 19 recommendations and the subsequent research by BSC had indicated differences of opinions on most of them, emphasising the difficulty of Professor Lievesley ‘s task. Nevertheless the majority who completed the survey were supportive of the recommendations as a whole.
Then, on the 4th September, UKSA published its response to the recommendations, as shown on the BSC website – helpfully we had published their response alongside Professional Lievesley’s original recommendations. Of primary interest was their response to the first recommendation and their decision to establish a UK Statistics Assembly for 22ndJanuary 2025, with the objective to bring together the widest possible community of users and producers to advise on the UK’s needs for statistics. To facilitate that, UKSA joined with the RSS to establish the programme, offering a public consultation to suggest topics to be covered on the day. Accordingly, BSC created an online survey open to our associates and others, the results of which were summarised as Review Notes which were then discussed at a video conference held on 29th October 2024 leading to BSC suggesting a total of 8 proposals for inclusion into the programme. Fortunately, Phyllis Macfarlane had become a member of the National Statistician’s Expert User Advisory Committee and was included in the programme Delivery Group, which may have helped to ensure that our ideas were fully considered! Although the decision for a one day event had left no opportunity for the workshop format we had suggested for both Public Engagement and Health Statistics.
Aside from these public events there were many more private interactions between UKSA and Better Statistics during the course of the year including contributing to 4 of the reviews conducted by the Office for Statistics Regulation: The Winter Covid Infection Survey (WCIS); The Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR); the 3rd Assessment of the 2021 Census and the Systemic Review of Economic Statistics. For each of the first three we expressed some concerns with the work undertaken by the ONS: firstly exposing the bias inherent in only using a subset of the original CIS sample for the WCIS (and the subsequent GP Access Survey); then suggesting that accreditation for the PIPR would be premature given the present status of the measure and, finally, questioning the status of the 2021 census in the light of the controversy of the data on Gender. Subsequently, accreditation was removed from the Gender data, which is now defined as statistics under development. For the Systemic Review we had largely confined ourselves to communication issues, particularly the unhelpful website, and we also suggested that the system could benefit from stronger interaction with elements of the private sector whom we believed could provide valuable input to improving understanding the economy.
We also continued to question the OSR concerning the validity of accreditation of the CPIH in the light of the fact that the PIPR statistic is not accredited and, finally, we had begun discussions with the Market Research Society (MRS) and the OSR on creating a joint code of practice.
However the details belong in next year’s report, with our 4th year ending on a high note with the success of the Assembly held on the 22nd January, an event that brought in excess of 500 participants, demonstrating a depth of interest in our National Statistics which we had found very encouraging for the prospect of better statistics.
So, to summarise the year against our original objectives:
Our activities throughout the year have been directed towards this objective; the two public meetings and our contribution to the Assembly being most notable.
The discussions with the Market Research Society and the OSR concerning a joint code of Practice / Conduct have been directed towards this objective
The majority of our efforts have been through discussions with the OSR although there have been representations made to private research companies.