UK Statistics Authority Chair intervention regarding Universal Credit claimants

FOI reference: FOI-2026-3542

You asked

This request concerns the letter sent by Penny Young, Interim Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, to the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP on 6 May 2026, concerning a statement made at Prime Minister's Questions on 29 April 2026 regarding Universal Credit claimant numbers. That letter has been published on the Authority's website.

Please provide the following information, which I understand is held by the UK Statistics Authority or the Office for Statistics Regulation:

1) Please confirm the category of person or body that raised the concern with the Office for Statistics Regulation that prompted the letter of 6 May 2026, specifically, whether the concern was raised by: (a) a private individual; (b) a government department; (c) a minister or junior minister; (d) a special adviser; (e) another public body; or (f) whether the matter was self-initiated by the Office for Statistics Regulation without any external referral. If more than one category applies, please confirm all that apply.

2) All correspondence, including emails, letters, and any written records of telephone or meeting communications, between the UK Statistics Authority or the Office for Statistics Regulation and any minister, special adviser, civil servant, or government department, including the Cabinet Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Treasury, and the Prime Minister's Office, between 29 April 2026 and 6 May 2026 inclusive, that relates in any way to Universal Credit statistics, to the statement made by Kemi Badenoch MP at Prime Minister's Questions on 29 April 2026, or to the letter of 6 May 2026.

3) Any internal document, minute, email, or written record relating to the decision to publish the letter of 6 May 2026 on the Authority's public correspondence pages, including: the date on which that publication decision was made; whether any government body was consulted on or informed of the decision to publish prior to publication; and whether the decision to address the letter to Kemi Badenoch MP as an individual rather than to issue a general public statement was discussed.

4) The date on which the Office for Statistics Regulation first accessed the DWP StatXplore data cited in the letter, and the date on which preparation of the letter began. I note that footnote 4 of the PDF version of the letter states the data was "accessed 1 May 2025". Please confirm the correct date on which the data was accessed.

5) Any assessment, advice, guidance, or written record produced by or submitted to the UK Statistics Authority or the Office for Statistics Regulation concerning compliance with the Cabinet Office's pre-election guidance for public bodies in relation to the publication of the letter on 6 May 2026, the day immediately preceding elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd, and English local government on 7 May 2026. Please confirm: (a) whether any such assessment was produced before publication; and (b) if no assessment was produced, whether the timing of publication in relation to the elections was considered at all prior to release.

We said

Thank you for your request, which concerns the letter sent by Penny Young, Interim Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, to the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP on 6 May 2026, concerning a statement made at Prime Minister's Questions on 29 April 2026 regarding Universal Credit claimant numbers.

You have asked for information in relation to five questions. Please find our responses, along with supporting documents, included in this response. Some redactions have been made to the material disclosed. These are applied to information that is out of scope of the request or to information that is personal data and we would contravene data protection principles to disclose this information. In the case of the redacted personal data, this is withheld under s.40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

The Head of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), Ed Humpherson, would welcome the opportunity to discuss OSR's role and how this is delivered with you in more detail. Please let us know via following email if you would like to meet: regulation@statistics.gov.uk.

1) As the Authority's regulatory arm,  the OSR is responsible for managing its casework function, undertaking monitoring to identify issues regarding the production and or use of statistics and investigating issues raised with the Authority. We use our voice to stand up for statistics and to represent the public, reporting publicly where we have concerns and highlighting good practice. Anyone can raise an issue with us. 

In this case the issue was first raised with OSR on 29 April when a private individual shared an X post related to the statement made by the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP with the Head of the Office for Statistics Regulation by email. In line with our public interventions policy, the Head of the OSR asked the OSR casework team to open an internal case, which meant it would be treated as a self-initiated case, rather than as a reply to the individual who raised it. 

The issue was raised with our Head of Communications again on 30 April via another private individual, but we had already initiated work on the case at this point.

2) There was correspondence with a small number of external people across Government in relation to this case.

The Chair's office spoke to the Conservative Party Campaign Headquarters press office on 6 May shortly before the letter was published, and followed up on this conversation with an email, which included the full text of the letter. Again, this email was sent before the letter was published. It is a longstanding protocol to give those we are writing to courtesy notice, of about an hour, before publication. 

The case lead within OSR and the Head of Casework corresponded via email with statisticians who work on statistics relating to benefits and the Head of Profession for Statistics, respectively, in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) during our investigation. This was to check OSR had interpreted and presented the relevant statistics correctly. The Head of Casework and the OSR case lead also let these same statisticians in DWP know we would be publishing a letter (this was done on the day before publication) and shared the final text of this letter (shortly before publication, and after it had been shared with the Conservative Party Campaign Headquarters press office). This is in line with normal case work processes, which are set out in our published interventions policy and supporting FAQs. 

We have included the emails relating to these conversations alongside this response.

3) During the investigation, there were emails between members of OSR relating to the decision to publish the letter to Kemi Badenoch MP. There was also a briefing document prepared for the Chair, started on 30 April and completed on 5 May, which stated that "the DG's advice to the Chair is to write publicly to the leader of the opposition". 

The Chair's office confirmed in conversation that the Interim Chair was content with the proposal to write a public letter to Kemi Badenoch MP on 5 May.

At one point in email correspondence between members of OSR on 1 May, the Head of Casework raised the idea of a public statement saying, "I do have an additional idea, which is that -- if we consider misrepresenting unemployment figures is not the paramount issue here, we could consider a public statement (on a longer time scale) about how to interpret and use figures relating to UC -- as this is now a recurring issue."

Through the course of discussion, however, we reached a shared understanding of the issue and the final consensus in OSR was that the statement Kemi Badenoch MP made aligned closely with our concern about misleading statements, as expressed in our published interventions policy: "In considering whether documents or statements are liable to mislead, we are concerned when, on a question of significant public interest, statistics are used to communicate a descriptive statement that the wider relevant statistical evidence would not support, despite otherwise being an accurate statement." and, therefore, it was appropriate to write directly to the MP. This was reflected by the clear recommendation OSR ultimately made to the Interim Chair, which was to write a public letter. The published letter itself sets out why OSR considers that the statement made had the potential to be misunderstood or to mislead those hearing it. 

This is not the first time OSR has written publicly about misuse of statistics on Universal Credit. OSR wrote publicly to the Permanent Secretary of DWP in March 2025. Although the issue was not exactly the same, in both cases the figures reported did not recognise that most of the increase in the number of people claiming Universal Credit is due to the process of migrating people from legacy benefits, which began before the current government. We include this additional information to demonstrate that OSR has publicly called out misleading use of these statistics before, and we would expect to do so whenever it comes up in public debate. 

As detailed in response to question two, the Chair's office informed the Conservative Party Campaign Headquarters press office of the letter before it was published (via telephone and then via email), the Head of Casework informed the Head of Profession for Statistics at DWP and the OSR case lead informed statisticians in DWP who had helped confirm OSR's understanding of the statistics.

4) OSR can confirm that StatXplore data were accessed by the OSR case lead on 30 April 2026 and on 1 May 2026. The use of 2025 in the published letter is an error, which we will correct. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

5) This issue was discussed at the Authority Board meeting on 30 April and OSR was asked to complete our investigation, including any intervention, before the day of the election. The relevant extract of the Authority Board minutes says, "The Board agreed the importance of responding publicly before the local elections." The full minutes from the meeting will be published on the Authority's website in due course.

There was already ongoing public discourse about the statement made by Kemi Badenoch MP by this point. For any OSR intervention to be timely and in the public interest, our investigation and any action needed to be issued quickly. 

Throughout this intervention OSR conducted business according to our normal casework processes, which are set out in our interventions policy. OSR can continue to intervene publicly during formal pre-election periods, under its role of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics. However, as set out in our interventions policy, our threshold for intervening publicly is higher. We are likely to limit public interventions to occasions where a statement is materially wrong or misleading to the point it could significantly impact on the political debates that are presented to voters. This case met the criterion in our policy. More information about our role in elections is available in our published interventions policy and associated FAQs, as well as on OSR's website, via our Elections guidance pages.

Finally, we would like to reiterate that, the Head of the OSR, Ed Humpherson, would welcome the opportunity to discuss OSR's role and how this is delivered with you in more detail. Please let us know via following email if you would like to meet: regulation@statistics.gov.uk.