5 - The United Kingdom

Summary

Britain has a partly decentralised arrangement where most official statistics are produced in government departments at the direction of ministers. A parallel set of centralised statistical institutions and organisations has grown up over time, culminating in the 2007 legislative reforms instituting a formally independent central statistical authority. Chapter 6 traces the different credibility imperatives bearing on UK official statistics and shows how these produced demands for centralisation, legislation, and independencewith attention to the political fallout from the Thatcher Government’s defunding of and interference in official statistics, along with subsequent efforts to find arrangements enhancing statistical independence while preserving the decentralised model. The chapter illustrates impacts of UK government statisticians’ behaviours, highlighting problems in the management of the central statistical agency, and conflicts between statisticians over reform. It shows that the distribution of statistical authority in the UK reflects efforts to reconcile post-Thatcher depoliticisation with a decentralised arrangement and Westminster conventions of ministerial prerogative.