Sir,
Your article (Outrage of National Significance, 29 June 2026) rightly highlighted how crucial the work of the ONS is and the challenges it faced in 2025, but it didn’t include the improvements we’ve made at the ONS over the past year and misunderstood the respective leadership roles.
We have taken difficult prioritisation decisions that ensure a focus on quality over quantity, with resources directed at improving our statistics. This is working. We have recovered responses to our Labour Force Survey to be broadly in line with pre-pandemic levels. We reinstated producer price statistics and innovated with the introduction of scanner data for consumer prices, made our business survey collection fully digital and have been accredited by the IMF as meeting the higher tier of data standards. We have transformed international migration statistics and made critical preparations for Census 2031. We have done this while bringing about demonstrable improvements to our organisational culture – including positive staff survey feedback.
There is still much to do, but the ONS has made real and sustainable progress through a responsible and transparent approach. Our new business plan and waiting room process make sure we have realistic and tested plans, with our next public update on our surveys and economic statistics improvement due in July.
A new National Statistician will be a welcome addition to strengthen capability across the statistical system, but the purpose in the ONS is clear - to deliver the statistics the country relies on – which we continue to produce day in, day out. We publish over 600 statistical outputs every year which are used extensively and trusted by our users. There will of course be issues as we recover, but the positive progress so far is significant.
Regards,
Darren Tierney
Permanent Secretary, Office for National Statistics