Michael Keoghan
Deputy National Statistician
Office for National Statistics
Drummond Gate
London
SW1V 2QQ
10 November 2023
Dear Mike,
Subject: HM Treasury’s request for pre-release access to ONS public sector productivity baselines in November 2023
On June 12th 2023 the Chancellor asked the National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, to review how public sector productivity with departments is measured. You are publishing the first update to this review on 17 November, which will include new baseline estimates for public service productivity from 1997, including 2021 and 2022. To support timely preparation for the Autumn Statement document we are asking the National Statistician to grant exceptional pre-release access to particular HMT staff where it is required of them to update the document and start preparing advise for the Chancellor of these baselines. HMT has a timetable for finalising Autumn Statement documents and pre-release access will allow any necessary adjustments to be made before text needs to be locked down. The Autumn Statement 2023 will be delivered on 22 November. As stated above, the public sector productivity baselines will be published on 17 November, and to allow adequate time to prepare timely and high quality advice on policy decisions, HMT are requesting exceptional pre-release access to the publication on Thursday 16 November.
HMT welcomes all steps to ensure the integrity of official economic statistics and fully supports the decision to allow only a select few staff with exceptional pre-release access. This would consist of three HMT SCS and five HMT officials.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Cornelius
Deputy Director, Cross-cutting Strategy, Insight & Reform
Andrew Cornelius
Deputy Director, Cross-cutting Strategy, Insight and Reform
HM Treasury
1 Horse Guards Rd
London
SW1A 2HQ
(By email)
HM Treasury’s request for pre-release access to ONS Public Sector Productivity baselines, November 2023
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your letter of 10 November 2023 seeking exceptional pre-release for ONS’ experimental statistics public services baselines publication, in advance of the 17 November to support the work of HM Treasury and timely preparation for the Autumn Statement.
As you will be aware, when the then National Statistician announced an end to pre-release access to ONS statistics he said that ‘Should there be a need for exceptional pre-release access to particular individuals for a specific release this would be fully transparent’. The overarching principle behind these arrangements is that we should work to ensure the integrity of our statistics but also recognise that in exceptional circumstances, the public benefit likely to result from limited pre-release access significantly outweighs the detriment to public trust in official statistics likely to result from such access.
On that basis, and having discussed this with the National Statistician, ONS grants you exceptional pre-release access, as requested, for the purposes of ensuring that the Autumn Statement can appropriately take account of these experimental statistics. To be specific:
ONS will grant you pre-release access to the following datasets:
- For total public service productivity and for service areas Healthcare, Education, Adult social care, Children's social care and Public order and safety: experimental 1997-2019 trend
- For total public service productivity and Healthcare, Education and Public order and safety: experimental 2021 and 2022 nowcasts and associated confidence intervals.
- These will be published at 09.30 on the 17 November 2023.
- We will make these datasets available to you from 09.30 on 16 November 2023.
- We understand that you will limit the number of individuals who will have access to the data covered by this arrangement, and that you have already supplied the list of 6 officials and their positions, who will have pre-release access. This pre-release access will be for the purposes of producing and quality assuring your forecast(s).
I trust that these arrangements will prove satisfactory, but if you have any further questions or concerns, please come back to me.
Yours sincerely
Michael Keoghan
Deputy National Statistician and Director General, Economic, Social and Environmental Statistics Group