Labour claimed to make the Office of National Statistics "independent". It all turned out to be a bit like the Bank of England’s fabled "independence" - the one that led to a big reduction in its regulatory powers over banks and its right to manage the foreign exchange reserves. In the case of the ONS it has watched powerless as

1. The Chancellor switched from the RPI to the CPI, to reduce inflation by more than 1% per annum at??a stroke!

2. Public sector productivity figures were stopped, as the Chancellor decided they were not good enough so they had to be recalculated putting in a positive variable to allow for "quality".

3. The immigration figures have been changed to cut the numbers of recent migrants living in the UK. Four leading Councils that have to deal with the consequences for public services of?? rises in their resident populations today challenge the government’s assumptions, and show why they think the numbers are now substantially understated.

4. The unemployment figures have been brought down by transferring people to other categories and types of benefit, but still leaving them without a job. There are 5.4 million people of working age without a job living on benefit - about the same as in 1997. That’s a bad result when you take into account the growth we have had in the number of jobs since then.

5. The New Deal has not been properly accounted for. Frank Field today tells us it was a spectacular failure, costing us billions but not leading to a reduction in the number of young unemployed. The Opposition has opposed this waste of money.

6. The PFI/PPP obligations and potential risks are not properly accounted for in the National Accounts. Somehow the government has persuaded the independent Statistical service to leave out substantial off balance sheet financing, which any company would have to include on the balance sheet.

7. The government makes companies put pension deficits on their own balance sheets, raising the cost of capital for them, whilst steadfastly refusing to even mention the huge deficits on its own pension accounts, which include many pension promises that are 100% unfunded.

When past Conservative governments changed the way of calculating the numbers of the unemployed Labour always kicked up a big fuss. They implied it would all be different when they came to power. It has been. They change the way of calculating more of the numbers more of the time!

It’s another reason why people are so fed up with politics. It has not persauded people that Labour has solved the underlying problems. Why doesn’t the new government try creating a truly independent Stats service, and accept honest numbers when they come forward? If you want to solve problems you first need to measure and understand them. It’s no good denying there is a youth unemployment problem, an inflation problem or a long term unemployed problem and fiddling the figures to prove that, when everyone knows there is.

??

??

Trackback URI | Comments RSS