Dec 20, 2022
National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, joins Miles in a slightly festive episode of Statistically Speaking, to look back on some of the highlights and challenges for the ONS in 2022 while gazing positively, but objectively, towards 2023.
TRANSCRIPT
MILES FLETCHER
Hello, and as another statistical year draws to an end you join us for a slightly festive episode of Statistically Speaking.
I'm Miles Fletcher and with me this time is the national statistician himself, Sir Ian Diamond. We're going to pick out some of the key stats from another momentous year. Talk about some of its highlights and the challenges faced by the Office for National Statistics. We’ll gaze positively, but objectively, into 2023 and Sir Ian will be answering some of the questions that you our listeners wanted us to ask.
Ian, welcome once again to
statistically speaking.
IAN
DIAMOND
First, thanks very much for that
introduction. And can I offer festive greetings to all of your
listeners?
MILES
Yes, it's come around again quickly,
hasn't it? So much to talk about from the past year, but let's kick
off with a very big number in every sense, and that's
59,597,542
IAN
...is the population of England and
Wales according to the census, and one, which I have to say is one
of the greatest censuses that has ever been undertaken. And it's
just an absolute thrill to commend my colleagues who have worked so
hard to deliver it but also to every citizen of England and Wales
who filled in those forms in 2021, and of course, those in
Northern Ireland as well.
MILES
Now, you had to press the button, both
on the decision to have that field operation go out in March 2021,
against the backdrop of the pandemic, and then of course, to sign
off on the results. How difficult were those
decisions?
IAN
Well, I'm not going to say it was
difficult Miles, I mean, it was a difficult decision, but if you
surround yourself with all the information, so before we took
the decision to go with a 2021 census, we looked at all the
upsides, all the downsides. We measured the risks. We looked at the
cost of delaying and we looked at the chance that we would get a
decent count, and whether people were looking like they were
now prepared to fill in forms, which have a whole set of risks. Was
there an algorithm that told us what to do? I'm afraid there isn't
an algorithm at the end of the day, I had to make a decision. I
made that decision in collaboration with my colleagues. It was a
decision we took together, and I think in every way it was the
right decision. And it was a real privilege for me to work with the
team in March and April, as we looked at the numbers, and for the
first time, and I think it's a really important milestone, that for
the very first time we shared our results with the local
authorities. I have always believed that you need to involve the
people on the ground to sense check the numbers and so for the
first time ever, we invited local authorities to be part of the
quality assurance process. So we contacted them under a
nondisclosure agreement. You have access to the numbers, let's have
a conversation and then we can co-create the numbers so that we all
feel comfortable and local authorities to their great credit,
really embraced this opportunity to co-create what was a great
piece of work. We believe that helped, that the numbers that we
were able to produce, we felt we had much more traction. And so it
really was a national effort to produce those numbers. And I'm very
proud of them.
MILES
In hindsight, and of course, it's easy
to look at things in hindsight, but did you think it helped that
essentially there was a captive audience?
IAN
Not at all. I completely disagree. I
think the reason for the high numbers wasn't a captive audience.
Let's remember that a very high proportion of the population were
not able to lock down, they had to go out to work. The reason I
think that we got high numbers was because of three reasons. Number
one, engagement. A massive programme of engagement with
different communities, which really, really, really meant that
people in different communities of our country understood why we
were asking, what the reasons were, in a way that perhaps hadn't
happened before, and critically to say to people, if you give us
your data we're not going away. We'll be back. And there's now a
programme of going back and sharing those data for particular
communities with them. So that's the first reason. The second
reason was, I've always said that censuses are nine tenths
logistics and 1/10 statistics and I felt that the logistics here
were absolutely right. And moving to an online first model was
incredibly important, it made it very easy for people to respond.
You could respond on your way to work on your mobile phone. That's
an awful lot easier than having someone knock on your door with a
big form. And so I think that worked. And then a final piece was
after the day having really good management information, which
really enabled us to understand where our coverage was higher and
lower, and then to target our field workers in a way that we've
never been able to before. Historically when I did censuses, for
example the 1981 census, every enumerate had a small area, they
walked around, they found people within that area. But we were able
to say right, we need more people in a particular area, less
people in another area, so we were moving them around, maximising
the resources and maximising the count.
MILES
Okay, so what do you think are the
biggest takeaways on the data we've released so
far?
IAN
I think some of the work around the
ageing of our country is really important, but not just the ageing
of our country because let's be honest, ageing is associated with
demand for services. And what we show very clearly is a changing
geography of ageing. Now, that's an ongoing situation. So if you
look at the proportion of over 65s, it's a very different
proportion of over 85s and so there is clearly a new internal
migration which gives in some areas, for example, mid Wales and
Cambridgeshire, a new demographic to think about for services over
time. So here's a really interesting point about the geography of
ageing, while noting that some of it is pretty traditional, the
south coast of England remains a place with high levels of older
people. Seaton in Devon, with the highest proportion of people over
90 in the country is an area which already knows that it has a high
demand for services. Other places will be coming along, and I think
that’s the first thing to say. The second thing I would note Miles
is the changing demographic of where people were born. And
certainly we are able to reflect some of that in the work but also
again to look at the geography of where different people are
living. And that's important. And also, for the first time ever, we
have asked questions on veterans, and I think that was a really,
really interesting piece of information. I must admit that the age
distribution initially looks a little surprising, because for men,
almost everybody is a veteran over the age of 80 because of
national service, and that goes down, but we now have the ability
to identify both the geography and the age distribution of veterans
and it was noticeable that the highest proportions of veterans
tended to be in places with military bases, Richmond Shire, in
Yorkshire, which is near to Catterick or Portsmouth near the Navy
areas. That says to us that they are obviously, and I'm not saying
it's surprising, but people who have been in the military tend to
end up staying around the areas where perhaps they have been based,
but actually being able to do that and then following that
up with a survey, a survey of veterans to understand their
circumstances and the services they need, and also their families,
I think is really super important that I have to say that that
survey which went out after the results of the census were
published, and we were able to launch them on the same day with the
Ministry of Veterans Affairs Johnny Mercer has been an incredibly
successful survey. Great response. And we're just in the process
now of analysing those data. And that's something to look out for
in the new year.
MILES
And plenty more census data still to
come. Of course,
IAN
Well, yes. And of course, the data will
be available now for an analysis by anyone. And that's really
exciting,
MILES
Well worth pointing out as well. Okay,
here's another big number for you.
11.1%
IAN
Is inflation.
MILES
That was the figure in October, it's
recently dropped down to 10.7.
IAN
You don't really understand inflation
until you actually get down to what's driving it and what the
components are. And so, we spend an enormous amount of time looking
at the components to understand them. So this drop to temporary 7%
In the most recent data is driven by a reduction in fuel costs,
with fuel prices going down, I mean it's still too expensive
don't get me wrong but they're going down a bit, and at the
same time that has been offset by increases in alcohol prices at
hotels, restaurants, and pubs. And so all put together, yes it’s
a drop, but not an enormous drop, and still a significant rise
compared with the same month last year.
MILES
Now there's been a fascinating and very
public debate over the cost of living of course, and particularly
over the relevance and validity of headline inflation measures, CPI
or CPIH. A preferred measure on the one hand, and on the other
hand, the actual experience of people seeing the cost of their
weekly shopping shooting up much faster than the official rate,
which is just an average of course, would suggest.
IAN
I think it's an important point. I had a
very good conversation with a number of influencers in this area.
And I think it is important to recognise that what one is asked to
do, and we are statutorily responsible for producing an inflation
statistic that is an average at the end of the day, and it's based
on a basket of goods, and that basket gets changed every year to
reflect buying patterns. So with a pandemic, we were more relaxed
Miles and you would be sitting opposite me just wearing a jumper
instead of a three-piece suit, it means that we took men's suits
out of the basket this year, but that's an average. The point that
people have asked is does that average reflect what's going up for
all groups of society? What about those people who are at the
poorer end of society and whose budget only allows them to buy the
least priced goods and that's why we put together a least price
index and one that's based on what might be called the value
goods that Supermarkets sell. And if we look at those we found
that the average price there was not unlike the overall inflation,
but again, an enormous amount of heterogeneity on the various
prices. The highest increase in the most recent products was for
vegetable oil, of course, driven by the issues associated with
Russia and Ukraine and the difficulties of the Ukrainian farms
which drive so much of that area. On the other hand, beef mince and
orange juice went down relatively. So
there was heterogeneity, inflation was high, but let me
be very clear, not unlike the overall inflation in the country
as a whole on the average.
MILES
The important point here being that
everyone's rate of inflation, of course is slightly different and
we have a means now of allowing people to find out exactly what
their personal rate is don’t we.
IAN
For those people who want to have a
really close look at their budget, the personal inflation
calculator which people can use and that personal inflation
calculator has been massively used. We had a very good partnership
with the media - BBC, The Guardian - for it to be widely available.
And indeed, in the first 24 hours or so of it being available on
the BBC website, over a million people used it - over a million
people accessing ONS data.
MILES
And you can find that out of course by
visiting ons.gov.uk and calculate your own personal rate of
inflation there.
Of course, when we think about money, we
inevitably think about work and that brings us on to the figures
around the labour market. And one rather sombre area of the Labour
Force Survey that's been the focus of again, a lot of attention
this year, is the increasing number of people deemed to be
economically inactive, perhaps very often because of long term
sickness. Now, what do you make of that?
IAN
Economically inactive is not just people
who are on sick, I mean there has been a steady move initially
from those over age 50 to inactivity, and that means that they are
reporting that they are not in work, nor are they looking for work.
We've called it a bit of a flourish, that flight from the labour
force of the over 50s is a real trend and a real worry for the
economy, given the skills that those people hold, and we've done
two surveys of the over 50s to understand why they have left the
labour force and what might tempt them back in. 500,000 over 50s
leaving the labour force, though it's only a very rough indicator,
if you don't replace them somehow, and with every 100,000
people being around 0.1 of GDP full time equivalents, and
that's 0.5 on the GDP. It's as simple as that. The other point
I would make that I think is important is another real concern for
the labour force. Just in the last few weeks we have started to see
just a hint of an increase in inactivity amongst the 16 to 24s.
That is important because if it were to continue it is normally an
indicator of challenges in the labour force and when 16 to 24s are
saying I don't have a job and I'm looking for one it tends to be
because there isn't one around. And so I do think that there is an
issue again for us to keep a laser focus on these numbers as we go
into 2023.
MILES
Okay, so we've mentioned GDP and of
course, there's been a lot of focus again on the level of GDP and
whether the economy is in so called recession or expanding or
whatever. Let's not get into that in any great detail now, but it's
worth pointing out that alongside GDP, the ONS has been trying for
some time now to broaden its focus on what matters in terms of
wellbeing, both socially and economically. And to produce a more
comprehensive picture of what's going on, aside from that very raw,
basic GDP estimate. Can you tell us a little bit about what's
developed on that front this year?
IAN
I think that's a really interesting
point. We, as other parts of the world’s national statistical
institutes have been saying, well, actually, there is much more to
our gross domestic product than just what comes strictly from the
economy. And so we have been working on the environment and natural
capital and building that into our overall estimates. And we're now
also working on some things that I have been thinking about for a
long time and I'm very excited that we are going to be able to work
on that. And that is to look at in many ways at the human capital
that we have, and how that is being effectively used. If you are
spending six hours a day, shall we say, caring for your elderly
parent and perhaps your grandchildren, then are you being
productive or not? And of course, the answer is you're being
incredibly productive. Or if you are, as a neighbour of mine
is, working a couple of evenings or a couple of afternoons a
week at a homeless shelter in Somerset, then are you being
productive in that volunteering? 100% yes. And so I think it is
important that we build these extra pieces in now. Is this point
about human capital, is this new? Well, the great, famous Nobel
Prize winner Richard Stone wrote in his Nobel lecture about this, I
made some suggestions, but at that time I would submit that it was
actually quite hard to build the models in the way that one would
want to. One could do the algebra, but it would kind of drop out
after a while. Whereas now with numerical estimation, we can really
move forward in an effective way and I'm looking forward to 2023
being a year when we really push forward with those models, and
really build the human capital. And most importantly, alongside
that, the wellbeing. Wellbeing is a much more complex indicator,
and we have a consultation out at the moment which I see coming
into fruition in 2023 around the measurement of our wellbeing. We
talk about the increasing proportion of elderly and I think it is
also important to think about that in the context of how are people
ageing. Now, let me just give you a statistic, Miles. If I
looked in 1951 at the age at which 1% of men had a probability of
dying, that'd be about 50. If I looked at it now, it’s 65. So
65 is the new 50. And you can look at things in all kinds of
ways like that, but that original idea is that of the great
demographer James Vaupel. And this 65 is the new 50 is absolutely
brilliant, but, and this is the nub of this, it needs to be healthy
ageing. It comes back to that point about inactivity, what are we
doing to enable people to feel that they can age healthily and
therefore be productive whether that is through traditional paid
employment or through other issues such as volunteering, that's
something we will be spending a lot of time over the next little
while estimating.
MILES
You mentioned ageing and on the topic of
health in 2022, the introduction of what some may view as the GDP
of health and that is the Health Index for England. Another
important piece of work that's been going on here.
IAN
What the Health Index allows us to do is
to get down to the local levels and we've got a pilot with
colleagues in Northumberland, Director of Public Health up there to
go down to sub local areas. And I think the important thing to
recognise is the geographical difference here in levels of health.
It's interesting to look at the national level, we need to look at
the geography, expectations of life at birth for men in Glasgow
City are 14 or 15 is less than expectations of life for men in
places like Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, you know,
that's a real issue. When I worked in Scotland, the Director of
Public Health for Grampian region put out some statistics which
showed within Aberdeen the difference between the two wards,
probably seven or eight miles apart was 16, a full 16 years. Those
are the kinds of differentials that I think we need to understand
more, we would all agree it is a priority to reduce
those inequalities in health. And it seems to me there is a
challenge for us to understand that and to reduce those
inequalities.
MILES
Okay, so we've talked about health,
personal wellbeing, economic wellbeing as well. Now there's an
additional element of attention for the ONS now, and that's been
the environment and particularly monitoring progress towards net
zero emissions by 2050 and to help with that ONS has
contributed to the official climate change portal, which you can
view at climate-change.data.gov.uk. Here's a statistic from that,
in 2021 84% of our energy still came from non-renewable
sources.
IAN
And that's what we need to continue to
measure. And clearly the focus on energy and energy supply has
increased this year as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. And we
over the next while need to make sure that we have very
accurate data on sources of energy. And our job is to monitor that
in an effective and efficient way. And we will do
that.
MILES
Now, we mentioned to some of our podcast
listeners, we'd be speaking to you today and asked them to come up
with their own questions on topics they'd like to put to
you.
So let's kick off with this one from
Professor Athina Vlachantoni, from the University of Southampton no
less, who asks: What's the most intriguing number or statistic
you've come across during your time as national
statistician?
IAN
One of the most interesting I would have
to say, was the very first number that we got from the COVID
infection survey, because we had to look at it very, very, very
carefully, to make sure going back to an individual level, to look
at the amount of virus in each positive case, so that we
were sure that we did not have a high number of false
positives. And what that showed, and when we linked it in with our
questions about symptoms, was the number of asymptomatic cases. And
I found that really, really interesting. On a lighter note, the
data that we get from credit card and debit card sales. On
July 21, I think it was in 2021, “Freedom Day” as it was
called, when people were able to go to the pub we saw a spike in
sales in pubs but we were also able to identify whether those sales
were in person or online. We've been monitoring online sales during
the pandemic very carefully. And I was really surprised to see a
spike in sales in pubs with the person not present. I was wondering
whether there were people down the street, you know, with very long
straws. Of course, what I hadn't realised is that in some pubs now,
you can get an app for your beer and it arrives as if by magic at
your table. And so it was a learning experience for me that it was
possible for large numbers of people to enjoy a drink, while
apparently not being at the pub.
MILES
Well, that's a lovely example of fast
digital data contributing towards incredible insight, which the ONS
is now able to access. But actually it leads nicely on to our next
question which comes from Sam Smith, from Cambridge, who asks: Hhat
are the longer-term opportunities and threats to the public from
the use of safe settings and the Integrated Data Service? Now
that's a question that’s essentially about security and the ethical
use of data for the public good.
IAN
Sam, that's a really super question and
something that we're absolutely passionate about. Firstly, using
data positively on the lives of our fellow citizens is what
we're here for, and therefore we recognise at all times that we use
data with the implicit permission of the public. So the first
answer I would say to Sam is that we are absolutely committed to
public engagement, transparency to make sure people know what we're
doing, how we're doing it. And we don't just talk about data, but
what are we going to use it for, and how is it going to be used and
can you find out how it has been used. These are really, really
important questions and public engagement and involving the public
in our decision making is important. Secondly, when we build
something like the Integrated Data Service, we are very, very
careful about the security and we work very closely with the top
security people across government to make sure that we have the
highest levels of security so that all the data doesn't need to be
in one place. We are able to bring the data we need from different
places so that we're not, if you like, moving large amounts of data
around and forming data lakes, that is not what we do. Thirdly, we
are very, very careful about how people can use the data and how
they can access the results. So we work very carefully to make sure
that those results have no way for people to impact on the privacy
and our data can only be used by approved people and the projects
on which they work on have to go through an ethical committee and
have to go through a research approvals panel. We call this process
“the 5 safes” and we believe that that does enable us to be
able to look any member of the public in the eye and say that we
are taking every precaution with your data, but at the same time,
the proof of the pudding has to be in the eating and the public
have to be able to see, I would argue, how those data have been
used and how there are real concrete examples of how the lives of
them or their fellow citizens have been improved by the use of
linked administrative data.
MILES
Final question. This comes from Jennifer
Boag from Scotland - clue there - and she asks: Do you have
confidence that the work being done to retrieve Scotland’s census
will give us reliable UK wide statistics, so that Scotland's data
will be comparable with the rest of the UK?
IAN
Well, thanks, Jennifer, for that. A
census is a process and we are seeing that our colleagues in
Scotland working on the Census have now got the ability to use the
data they collected as well as the coverage survey, and now the
administrative data, to be able to bring those three sources
together into a reliable estimate of the population. I would just
like to thank Professor James Brown and the international steering
group for the very hard work that they've been putting in providing
very strong steers on what should we do. And my position at
the moment is that we can expect, if everything goes well, to see
some reliable Scottish data during 2023. And we at the ONS are
working extremely hard to make sure that we can roll forward our
data in a way that means that we will have the 22 best estimates
for the whole of the UK which we can put our hand on heart and
say that we trust. We're not there yet. I believe we can get there.
And I will do everything in my power to ensure that we
do.
MILES
Data from Scotland on the way then, and
more data from England and Wales still to come, but also in 2023 a
decision on whether the UK Scotland, England, Wales and Northern
Ireland perhaps will have censuses in future?
IAN
Well not a decision on all four because
undertaking a census isn't independent that Scotland and Northern
Ireland will take their own view, as will Wales. Currently we do
the census for Wales with our colleagues in Wales, but at the end
of the day it is a Welsh Government decision for that to happen. We
in the ONS will be making a recommendation to our board and through
them a recommendation to Parliament as to whether we believe
that we can produce regular population estimates and the
multivariate data that comes with them in a way that means that we
will not have need to have another census in 2031. I mean, I would
say that we're able to do this and there's an enormous amount of
work going on. And that's a real major breakthrough because while
I'm passionate about censuses and a census is an incredibly
beautiful and wonderful thing, I would have to say that it is out
of date as soon as you've done it, and therefore being able to have
regular estimates would be a breakthrough rather than simply
rolling forward and we can't hide from the fact that as you roll
forward and you get further rolling forward, it becomes much more
difficult at the local area level to make those estimates. And
so I am really excited about that decision and will be consulting
during 2023 on where we have got to, which of course also brought
about a statutory responsibility to see whether we can make local
estimates of average income, and we will continue to look at that
as well. So I think it's an exciting 2023 with regard to the future
of the census.
Miles, it's been a real pleasure.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to another opportunity to
join this podcast in the future. Thank you.
MILES
Well, that's it for another episode of
Statistically Speaking and if you're one of the people who
collectively browsed the ONS website 21,809 times on Christmas Day
last year, rest assured that this year you'll be able to access
every single one of our podcasts from 2022 directly from the
homepage now on the ONS website.
And as always, you can subscribe to future episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms. Do also please follow us on the @ONSfocus Twitter feed.
I'm Miles Fletcher and from myself, our producer Steve Milne, and the whole of the Office for National Statistics, have a very Merry Christmas.
ENDS