Statistically Speaking

In this episode, we explore ONS's work with other countries to raise the world's statistical capabilities. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Hello and welcome again to 'Statistically Speaking', the Office for National Statistics' Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher, and in this episode we're going international. Now it hardly needs saying that global issues, climate change, population growth, inflation, to name a few are best understood and addressed with the benefit of good global statistics. So, to that end, the ONS works in partnership with a number of countries worldwide with the ultimate aim of raising the world's statistical capabilities. At the one end of Africa, for example, a continent where it's deeply involved, that includes embedding state of the art inflation indices and other economic data in Ghana. On the other side of the continent, it's meant using AI and machine learning to track the movement of displaced populations in Somalia. How do you run a census in places where nobody has a permanent address? It's all fascinating work and here to tell us about it, Emily Poskett, Head of International Development at the ONS; Tim Harris of the ONS Data Science Campus's international development team; and joining us from Accra, our special guest, Government Statistician of the Republic of Ghana and head of the Ghanaian Statistical Service Professor Samuel Annim. Emily then, to start give us the big overview if you would, set out for us the scale and the purpose of this international development work that the ONS is doing. EMILY POSKETT We work with countries around the developing world to support strong modern statistical systems wherever we see a suitable opportunity to do so. MF What form does that work take? Does it mean statisticians going out to these countries? EP Yes, it does, when that's the right way to go about things. So our work is usually through the form of medium-term partnerships with a small group of national statistical offices, or NSOs, from the developing world, and those partnerships are medium term over a number of years in order to build up a real understanding of the context in that country, that national statistical office's vision for modernization and how the ONS can be of most help to achieve their own goals under their own strategy. That relationship will normally be led by a particular individual who spends time getting to know the context and getting to know the people, getting to know what ONS can do to help. A partnership might cover a range of topic areas from census to data science to leadership training to economic statistics, and the lead point of contact, the strategic advisor in many cases, will bring in the relevant experts from across ONS, and they'll work through virtual collaboration but also through on-site visits, and they will work out the best timing for those and the best delivery modality in order to ensure that the gains are sustained. Our primary focus really is to make sure that changes that we support in the partner organisation are sustainable, and the work that ONS does using the UK's aid budget is really impactful and leads to long term change. We don't always work through direct partnerships, for example where we see opportunities to work alongside other organisations, so international institutions like the World Bank or other national statistics offices like Statistics Canada or Statistics Sweden, they might choose to bring us in to deliver small pieces of focussed technical assistance alongside their own programmes. One of our medium-term partnerships is with the United Nations Economic Commission For Africa (UNECA), and they work with all 54 countries of Africa, and they can choose to bring in our expertise alongside their own to target particular needs in particular countries. But I would say that 70% of our effort is through these medium-term partnerships. MF So the ONS is providing one part of a large patchwork of work, going on right across the developing world, but what is the ultimate purpose of that? What are all these countries trying to achieve together? EP Well, strong statistical systems are essential in all countries to aid effective planning and informed decision making. And this is even more important in developing countries where resources are often scarce and you're trying to use scarce resources to target a wide range of needs across the population. And that resource might include UK aid for example, and aid from other countries. The UK has been statistical capacity building for many, many years through different modalities, working with partners, and the ONS is just one implementing partner who can be called upon to provide that technical expertise. We're really proud to be a partner of choice for a number of developing countries and the ONS is seen worldwide as being a leader. We're really proud that countries like Ghana would choose to work with us, and that we want to do our bit to help them to achieve their own strategy and their own goals. MF Well, this seems like an excellent moment to bring in Professor Samuel Annim. Our great pleasure, great honour, to have you with us professor. From your perspective, and what you're looking to achieve in the Ghana Statistical Service, how important how useful is the work with ONS been for you? PROFESSOR SAMUEL ANNIM From the perspective of how it has been important for us, I mean, I look at it from several aspects. I got into office in 2019, a year after the ONS and GSS collaboration had been established. And when I joined obviously, I had a sense of what I wanted to contribute to the office. Partnership that we've seen between National Statistical Offices over the years have always taken the dimension of statistical production partnerships, and what I simply mean by that is that they're going in to help the service deliver on its core mandate. So for example, if price statistics are the priority, then that is the area you want to focus on, but our partnership with ONS took a different dimension. In addition to focusing on the traditional mandate of the Institute, which is the production of statistics, we really have over the period achieved some milestones from the perspective of transformation, which is of high priority to me, and secondly, from the perspective of injecting technology or contemporary ways of dispensing our duty as a National Statistical Office. So from an individual point of view, it has it has been beneficial to the mission that I have, and since then we have kept on working in the area of transformation. MF Listening to what you have to say there, it does sound as though some of the big challenges you face at the moment are not too dissimilar from the ones faced by ONS, all about modernising statistics, particularly using big data and new technology. SA Indeed, and I must say that it is a wave across all national statistical offices, because we are now trying to complement traditional surveys and censuses with non-traditional data sources i.e. Big Data, administrative data, citizens generated data and other geospatial resources. So collaborating is the key thing here, because this is new to the statistical community. So it's important we collaborate to learn how you are dealing with issues that are not consistent with the production of official statistics. Now as a global community, we are all thinking about how to use citizens generated science, I mean, getting citizens to provide us with data. And this is an area in which there isn't any National Statistical Office that can claim authority, because the approach and the processes are pretty not consistent with the guidelines for production of official statistics. So it's important to learn how countries are doing it and see how we can collaborate to get this done. MF Yes, in the last episode of our podcast, interestingly, we talked about the challenges of getting our citizens here in the UK to take part in surveys. Are Ghanaians friendly to what you're trying to achieve? Or are they perhaps sceptical as well and difficult to engage? SA I wouldn't say they're sceptical, I think they really feel part of it. And that is one of the strengths of citizen generated data, because if you package it in a way that it is more demand driven, rather than supply, you don't just go and tell them 'do this because I know how it's supposed to be done', but instead give them the platform to tell the National Statistical Office what their experiences are, provide them with platforms that they can easily engage so that they can feel part of the process and they really own the product. In our case, it is not a product that is owned by the statistical service but it is a product that is owned by the sub national agencies, and that is, as I said earlier, the beauty of citizen generated data. It is co-creation and co-ownership of the statistical product. So they are not sceptical, they are very receptive to it, and they are getting a better understanding of what we do as a National Statistical Office. MF Thinking internationally, thinking globally, what sort of shape do you think the world's statistical system is in now, as a result of partnerships like this or other developments, generally looking across Africa and looking beyond Africa, when we think about key issues, particularly climate change - how good is the statistical system now in tracking these very important changes, and the impacts they're having? SA We have as national statistical offices been very content with the traditional statistics - labour statistics, price statistics, GDP - and you do that either monthly, quarterly, or in some instances annually, and even the social indicators, I mean, it's only a few countries like the UK that has been able to do social indicators annually, for those of us in the Global South, a lot of the social indicators are being collected every five years, or every seven to eight years. So this was the way national statistical offices, up until about 2017 or 2018, were shaped. But with the data revolution that we saw around 2014, and since the World Development Report, the data for better lives document, that came out in 2021, clearly, we now have to approach statistics from a different point of view. And this is simply asking the question, how do I contextualise the statistics beyond what international communities would be expecting national statistical offices to do? I mean, now we are doing everything possible to ensure that we have a monthly GDP, and this is something that we are also learning from the partnership with ONS, because we are aware that they are developing models to ensure that beyond GDP they have some indicators that would readily give us insight on economic performance. And related to the issue of climate change that you are you talking about Miles, it's one of the areas that you cannot simply dispense your statistics in that one area as a standalone National Statistical Office, because this is something that has a continental dimension, something that has a global dimension. And at the moment we have data sitting in different silos, and the only thing that we can do is through partnership, see how we can bring these datasets together to help us get a better understanding of issues around climate change. So going forward, in my point of view, if we really want to sustain the transformation that we are seeing as a global Statistical Office, the only way out is through partnership, is through collaboration. And one of the things that I'm putting on the table is that we better begin to measure partnerships. Because we've treated partnerships as a qualitative engagement. And really, nobody knows which partnerships are working and which are not working. So if we're able to measure it, we can more clearly see the benefits of partnerships, although we all hold the view that it is the way to go. MF Interesting what you said about how we've traditionally concentrated on those classical measures of economic progress, and notably GDP. You might be interested to hear that the charity Oxfam, the big NGO, was in the news here in the UK recently when they said that GDP was 'colonialist', and it was 'anti-feminist', because it ignored the huge economic value of unpaid work, which they said is largely undertaken by women. Well, whether you agree with that or not, it does perhaps highlight the need for going beyond GDP and producing these alternative, and perhaps richer, wider measures of economic progress and economic value. SA I mean, I clearly associate with that submission, and we currently doing some work with the United Nations Development Programme on the National Human Development Report. And the focus of this report is exactly what you are talking about, Miles. We are looking at the current value of work, and we are looking at the future value of work. And we are going beyond the definition of who is employed, which strictly looks at whether the work that you are doing comes with remuneration or not, because once you broaden it and look at the value of work, you definitely have the opportunity to look at people who are doing unpaid work, and indeed their contribution to the progress that we are seeing as a human society, and the National Human Development Report has a sharp focus on this gender issue. They're going to look at that closely. And again, this is coming on the backdrop of an ongoing annual household income and expenditure survey that we are doing. So traditionally, government and international organisations would ask what is your employment and what is your unemployment rate? And then in this report, we tell them that we need to begin to look at those who are working, but we see they're not employed, simply because they are not working for pay or profit, and the proportion of people who are in there, and then once you disaggregate based on sex, age and geography, it's so revealing that we are losing a number of insights from the perspective of unpaid work. And so I fully subscribe to that view. MF That's interesting. Professor, for now thank you very much, and I hope you'll join the conversation again later, but we're going to broaden out to talk about, well, it's actually a related development, Emily, talking about women and unpaid work, that's been another theme of ONS's work with the UN Economic Commission for Africa. EMILY POSKETT There was a request put forward by national statistic offices around Africa to undertake leadership training, and this was part of the country's modernization vision. Countries recognise that in order to achieve modernisation, they need to have strong leadership. So they asked the UNECA to deliver leadership training and ONS partnered with UNECA to design and pilot this leadership training programme in a range of countries. As part of delivering that we noticed and recognised a lack of female leaders in a number of National Statistics Offices around the continent, and thought with partners about what we can do to help support that, so now as well as running a leadership training for the top tier of leadership in in each organisation, we also run a women into leadership training for potential future female leaders from within the staff. And it's been really, really successful. Some of the feedback that we've had from leaders in those organisations is that they've seen their female staff becoming more confident, more outspoken, more ambitious, putting themselves forward for positions, putting their ideas forwards as well, and generally feeling more confident to contribute in the workplace. We're really proud of that success and hope to roll it out in many more countries around the continent. MF A country that's the other side of Africa in a number of important senses, and that is Somalia, which of course if you've followed the news to any extent over the last few decades, you'll know the serious turmoil that's affected that part of Africa, Tim Harris, bringing you in, what's been going on in Somalia that the ONS has been involved in, particularly when it comes to measuring population and population movement. Tell us about that. TIM HARRIS Well, as you say, Somalia is a very fragile context. It's been affected by conflict and climate change and environmental issues for many years. And that's made it very challenging to collect information, statistical information, on a range of things. But particularly on population, which is a key underpinning piece of statistics which any country needs, and in fact, there hasn't been a census in Somalia since the 1970s, almost 50 years now, but there are plans to do a census next year, with support from the UN Population Fund, UNFPA, and other various institutions in Somalia and development partners, as well as the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. And Emily's international development team are also trying to form a partnership, or are forming a new partnership, with the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics. So there are plans to do a census next year, and we're really in the preparatory phase for that at the moment. And we're looking to see in our team how we can use data science, new techniques, new data sources, to try and help prepare to run that census. One of the particular issues in Somalia is that there are significant numbers of people who are displaced from where they usually live, by the conflict, by climate change. There's also been a drought for the last few years, and so there are hundreds of thousands, in fact millions, of people who are displaced from where they usually live. They tend to congregate in what we call Internally Displaced People Camps, or IDP camps. So they're not refugees, they haven't crossed an international boundary, but they are displaced from where they usually live. And these IDP camps tend to be quite fluid and dynamic. They're often in areas that are difficult to get to, so information on them is very difficult to obtain. They change very quickly, they grow, they contract, and a lot of them are on private land. So we're looking to see whether we can use new data techniques, and new data sources, to give us information about the broad scale of population in that area. MF And those new data sources are necessary presumably because it's very difficult to actually get out and physically see these people in those areas and count them physically. TH That's right, and they change very quickly. So if you're running a census, you want to know where your people are, so you can send the right number of enumerators to the right places, you can draw boundaries of enumeration areas and so on. MF You need an address register essentially, but these are people effectively without addresses. TH That's right. That's the way that you do it in the UK. It's not possible in many of these IDP camps in Somalia. So we're looking to see whether we can use high resolution satellite imagery, which we can task for a particular period of time, say in the next week or the next month. And we use that satellite imagery to see whether we can identify structures on the ground in these camps. And in fact, the UN Population Fund has been doing this in a very manual way for some time now. So someone looks at the satellite imagery, and they put a point on each tent, and they try and count the tents and the structures within these camps. That's obviously a very time-consuming way of doing it. So we're looking to see can we do it in a more automated way. So we've procured some satellite data and we've developed what we call training data. So in certain parts of the camps, we manually draw around the outlines of the tents, and we use techniques called machine learning. We show computers what areas are tents and what areas are not tents. And we try and train them using these algorithms to be able to predict in areas they haven't seen which areas are tents and which areas are not tents. So we're trying to develop models where we can use high resolution satellite imagery to predict the areas where there are tents, to produce numbers of tents, and in this way, we can help to estimate the broad numbers of people in these areas, and that can feed into the preparations for the census to help it run more smoothly and more efficiently. MF And trying to count an ever-shifting population allowance, in that we've got seasonal variations going on, some people unfortunately being evicted, and then you've got a population that would be nomadic anyway. TH People in these camps, they're a whole mixture of people, some who've been forced to move because of drought, some have been forced to move because of conflict, and as you say, there are large numbers of nomadic people as well. And they have tended to also congregate in these IDP camps in recent times because of the drought and other climate conditions. MF And it's thought there could be up to 3 million people at the moment living under those conditions in Somalia. TH That's right. I mean, that I think highlights one of the particular issues, in that the numbers are very uncertain. So there is some information from camp management administrative data, there is some information from some limited surveys that the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics has undertaken, but the estimates from those two different sources produce very, very different results. And so this is what we're trying to do, to see whether objectively we can count the number of tents, and therefore have some objective measure of at least the number of tents and structures, obviously then we need to move to how many of those tents and structures might be occupied. How many people on average might be in each of those tents and structures. But can we add something to the information context that produces some more objective measures, at least of the number of tents and the number of structures in those areas. MF Well, that's the kind of cutting-edge stuff that the Data Science Campus is all about. But Emily, the ONS has been involved in other censuses in Africa over the longer term, hasn't it? EMILY POSKETT Yes, that's right, Miles. So we've been involved in a number of censuses around Africa, including Ghana, also Kenya, Rwanda and a number of other countries through our partnership with the UNECA. And we've been able to really support countries to move from using paper for data collection to using tablets for data collection, during what they call the 2020 census round. And between ONS and the UNECA, we've been able to support on a number of different aspects, including how to make the most of that tablet technology. So you don't just move from using paper to using tablets and do the same processes. There are a number of advantages to using tablets in terms of how you can monitor the quality of the data coming in in real time, and how you can speed up that data collection and that data processing, and we've been able to work with NSOs around the continent on that. We've also been using modern data matching techniques to support countries with their post enumeration surveys, which is a way of testing and improving the quality of the census. We've also been working with partners on using data visualisation and new techniques for improving the dissemination and user engagement with the products coming out of the census and therefore increasing the value of the census data products. MF It's interesting what you say about introducing tablet technology for data gathering in the field, to be honest, it's not that long ago that the ONS actually moved to use that, rather than the traditional what was once described as 'well-meaning people with clipboards' going around asking questions. And it strikes me that in developing and working with these partner countries, the sort of methods the sort of technology being introduced, is not far behind where we're at really is it? EP No, absolutely. The ONS experts that get involved in these projects really learn a huge amount from the partners that they're working with as well, because often the partners we're working with have far fewer resources to deliver on similar goals. So the staff have to be incredibly innovative and use all sorts of different techniques and resources in order to achieve those goals. And people coming from ONS will learn a huge amount by engaging with partners. MF Well, on the modernisation theme, the census is another area where we've been working with Ghana isn't it, Professor? PROFESSOR SAMUEL ANNIM That's correct. We had support in all three phases of the census engagement, that is before the data collection, during the data collection, and after the data collection. We were very clear in our minds that we were going to use tablets for the data collection. And one of the things that we didn't know, or struggled with, had to do with the loading of the materials onto the tablet for the data collection. Our original plan would have taken us about six months or four months to do that. And it wasn't going to be new for Ghana. We had other countries that had taken that length of time just to load the materials onto the tablet to enable the data collection exercise. And through the ONS and UNECA collaboration, we got technical assistance to provision the tablets in a much shorter duration. If I recall correctly, it took about six weeks to get all the items on the tablet. And we had been using tablets for data collection, but we hadn't been able to do remote real-time data monitoring because we didn't have a dashboard. We didn't know how to develop it. And through the partnership we were able to get a dashboard. The benefit of that was that after 44 days of exiting the field, we were able to put out a preliminary report on the census because during every day of the census we had a good sense of what the numbers were, whatever corrections we had to make we were making them. So after 44 days of exiting the field, we were able to announce the preliminary result. MF Wow, you had a provisional population total after 40 days? SA 44 days, yes. MF 44 days! Well, that puts certain countries to shame, I think, but anyway, let's not dwell on that. That's very impressive, Professor. And there's another project you've been working on, which I suppose is close to your heart as an economist, and that's the production of CPI? Modernising that? SA Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the first things that happened when I took office in 2019 was as part of the partnership, I visit ONS to understand what they are doing and how the collaboration can be deepened. And one of the things that we explored, and that was the first time I had heard of it, was how to produce a reproducible analytical pipeline. And all that simply means is that if you keep on doing something over and over again, you should think about automating the process. And that is the relationship that we have when it comes to CPI now. We have completely moved away from Excel. When I got in I said in addition to excel, let's use data, because when the process is not automated, and you have heavy dependence on human beings doing it, the likelihood of error is high. So we really bought into this and now we do our traditional ways, Excel, data, and then we do the reproducible analytical pipeline to compare the results. And ultimately, we're going to move away from the traditional XLS database and rely on this automated process. And this again, would allow us to hopefully reduce the length of time that it takes. So that is the extent to which we are modernising our CPI based on our collaboration. MF That's very impressive. And so through the process of speeding up the lag time of those regular indicators, you get a much timelier picture of what's going on in the economy. EMILY POSKETT This is one of the areas we will be working with a number of partners on. This idea of using new technology to deliver reproducible analytical pipelines and really, this is where national statistics offices around the world, but particularly those with low resources, can really utilise new technology to save time and improve quality. And this is something that we're really excited to be working with a number of different offices on, on a number of different topics, to really save human resources and ultimately improve quality. MF Tim, bringing you in... TIM HARRIS I think this really illustrates one of the other benefits of data science. We've talked a lot about the mobile phone records, call detail records, and their use in Ghana for producing mobility statistics, talked about using satellite imagery and machine learning in Somalia. But data science, and the tools of the digital age, can do a lot more of the basic underpinning work in statistical modernisation really well, and I think we really need to focus on that and see where we can benefit from that. And the work that Professor Annim talks about, about automating the CPI, I think that is really important. For that we can use the tools of coding, lessons from software engineering, like version control, and auditing processes, to really help us to get much greater efficiencies in these key statistical processes which any statistics office undertakes. And we've been very pleased to work with the Ghana Statistics Service on automating their consumer price index. I think that we're seeing that it's speeded up the process, it's reduced the scope for human error, it's enabled us to put in quality assurance checks. The process has enabled us to produce much more transparent processes, and processes that can be maintained over time, because people can understand and see what's been done rather than things being hidden in a black box. So this process of automating statistical processes is really important. I think the way we've engaged with the Ghana Statistics Service also highlights what we're trying to do in terms of building capacity for people within statistics offices to do this work for themselves. So partly we've done some of the work to help them automate. But we've also tried to build the capacity of Professor Annim and his colleagues so that they can then do this work themselves and take it forward, and not only within the consumer price index, but also seeing how they can plan more strategically about how this work can be done in other areas of statistics production. MILES FLETCHER Emily, what are the priorities for the future of this international development work of the ONS? EMILY POSKETT So our priority for the next phase of this work is to continue with the partnerships that we have and to build new partnerships. So Tim mentioned that we are working towards a new partnership with the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics. We're also considering new partnerships in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, to add to the ones we already have in Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, Namibia and with the UNECA. And that's just in Africa. We're also looking to see what we can do to support in other regions. We have a partnership with Jordan, and a new one with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and we're looking to do more in that region and beyond into Asia and the Pacific as well, but also looking to consolidate the kind of topics which we've worked on previously. So we've mentioned census, data science, women into leadership training, open SDG platform, and we're also looking to do more in new topic areas. So we're looking to do more in climate and environment statistics. We think this is a really important area that we're looking to do more in, in geography and geographical disaggregation of data. And I think we're looking to do more really on the usability of statistical outputs and dissemination of statistical outputs. I think a number of our partners do a really great job of collecting data, but there's a lot more that can be done to make use of new technology to better disseminate and improve the use of that data. So we're ambitious in the reach that we have with our small budget, but we want to make sure that we don't lose sight of sustainability, and by spreading ourselves too thinly, we could reduce the sustainability of the work that we do, and I think we're forever trying to balance off those two things. MF Professor Annim, perhaps I could give you the last word on this. How do you see the future of collaboration between the ONS and Ghana? PROFESSOR SAMUEL ANNIM We really want to push the collaboration beyond the two statistical agencies, and let me indicate that that's started already. One of the things that we want to achieve is more utilisation of our data. I mean, we are fine with the production of it. We are technical people. We can continue to improve on it. But what I see with this partnership is to scale our relationship as two national statistical offices. Our relationship should be scaled up to the data users. So we don't want to just sit as two statistical offices, improving the production of statistics, but really getting into the realm of the utilisation of statistics, and that is where we need to bring in other government agencies, based on what ONS and GSS are nurturing. MF There you have it, statistics are important, but it's outcomes that really matter. That's it for another episode of 'Statistically Speaking', thanks once again for listening. You can find out more about our international development work, read case studies and view our ambitious strategy, setting up the ONS's vision for high quality statistics to improve lives globally, on the ONS website, ONS.gov.uk, and you can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major platforms. You can also get more information, or ask us a question, by following @ONSFocus on Twitter. I'm Miles Fletcher and our producer at the ONS is Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye ENDS

In this episode we chat to members of the ONS Social Survey Collection Division about the importance, and challenges, of getting the general public to take part in crucial surveys that help paint a picture of what life is like across Britain. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to 'Statistically Speaking', the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher. Now I don't know about you - but it seems hardly a moment passes these days when we are not being asked to feed back. How was our service today? Are you satisfied with this product? Please fill in this short survey. Your responses matter. Well, forgive the natural bias, but today we're talking about surveys that really do matter. ONS surveys – some of which are the very largest conducted regularly in the UK – don't just inform economic and social policy, though they are hugely important to it. The data they gathered also represent a public resource of immense and unique value. But persuading people – some unaware, some sceptical and even hostile, others just very busy – to take part in them is a growing challenge for statistical institutions worldwide. In this episode then we'll be discussing how the ONS gathers often personal data from members of the public right up and down the country. Taking time out of their day to answer my questions, and to explain why it's absolutely crucial that you participate in our surveys if you get the opportunity to do so, are Emma Pendre and Beth Ferguson, who head up the ONS's face-to-face Field Operations; and sharing their own personal experiences of life on other people's doorsteps we have two of the ONS's top Field Interviewers, Tammy Fullelove and Benjamin Land. Welcome to you all. Emma, if I come to you first – give us an idea of what exactly the field community in ONS is. Who are you and what do you do? EMMA PENDRE The Social Survey Collection Division is the largest division in ONS. We primarily collect data from households either online, face to face or by telephone using computer assisted interviewing, and also work at air, sea and rail ports collecting data from passengers. All the data collected is used to produce quite a number of our key ONS publications which help to paint a picture of what life is like in the UK. And these can include things like estimates of employment and unemployment, how we measure inflation, how we measure migration, and a key topic of interest at the moment is the cost of living. So while most of ONS relies on the data that we collect for our outputs and statistical bulletins, the statistics that we particularly generate also support research, policy development and decision making across government and other private sector businesses as well. MF Now Beth, bringing you in here, when it comes to household surveys, presumably someone's deciding which households are going to be approached to take part. Who makes those decisions and how is it done? BETH FERGUSON So I'm not going to pretend to understand the clever people in the statistics team who work out how we get the right people to cover a broad spectrum of society. But yes, that's done by the sampling team and they choose a random sample for the surveys. MF And that's generated presumably from using the electoral roll. BF It's generated from something called PAF which is the Post Office Address Finder. I'll have to confirm exactly what that stands for. Yes, but essentially, it's a list of addresses across England, Scotland and Wales. MF And when it comes to the passenger survey, it's a question of stopping what we hope will be a representative random sample of people as they pass through those ports. BF Yes, it is. Yeah. But at the moment we're currently working on departures and arrivals. So yes, it's a random sample of individuals stopped and asked questions. MF But to make the data really representative and really valid, of course, we've got to be covering the whole of the country. The country in this case being Great Britain. How do we ensure that that coverage is working day in day out? BF That's our role as the kind of management of the face-to-face field interviewers. Different surveys are done over different frequencies. So we've got the Labour Force Survey and the transformed Labour Force Survey which addresses are issued for on a weekly basis and those surveys are delivered on a weekly basis. And then we've also got our other longer, more detailed financial surveys that we're issued with a quota for on a monthly basis. So our job is to make sure we've got the right people, in the right places, to knock on the right doors, to get hold of those members of the public and, you know, encourage them to agree to complete surveys for us. MF And luckily for us we're joined by two of those "right people" here today. Tammy and Benjamin, welcome to our humble podcast. Now you are both at the sharp end of our survey data collection, working as field interviewers. I'm obviously really interested in what you do day to day, but first off tell us how you got into this line of work. What was the attraction for you Tammy, how did you become a field interviewer? TAMMY FULLELOVE So prior to working for the ONS - I've never worked in public sector before, I've always worked in the private sector - and I've actually got a finance background. But then after being on maternity leave, having a young family, seeing the job advertised and the flexibility working with people in a very, varied job sort of pulled me to it to apply to be honest. And that was seven years ago, and I can honestly say I enjoy every single day I'm out in the field. It's great. MF And Benjamin how about you, what was your background? BENJAMIN LAND Well, I've done a variety of hospitality jobs in the past. I then applied to work on the Census at the start of 2021. And my manager at the time she had worked previously for the ONS on the basket of goods figures, and she recommended it as a really great place to work. It's funny how timing happened I saw a vacancy for a field interviewer, which I applied. And then I started in May 2021. So almost two and a half years ago now. MF Okay, so you've both got quite a bit of experience already under your belt. I was wondering of both of you, is there such a thing as a typical day for a field interviewer? TF I can honestly say no, every day is completely different. Depending on the area where you go into, where you may be working, streets apart, houses apart. You never know what door you knock on who can be behind that door, which makes every day completely varied, especially with the studies that you may be interviewing for, that they can be very different with the content. So yeah, two days are never the same. BL I totally agree with Tammy. It varies. My week has a sort of flow to it. So I tend to get out quite a lot at the start of the week to visit various addresses. If it's LFS they change every week. On the financial surveys it's monthly so you've got longer to familiarise yourself with the area. We tend to have a team meeting most Tuesday mornings just to check in and see how we're doing. And then obviously interviews are scheduled around respondents' timetable so that can be any time up to sort of eight, nine o'clock at night and sometimes Saturdays, if that's when they're available. MF Going out to people's houses on a daily basis, you no doubt encounter a wide variety of people. That must have led to one or two amusing episodes. TF I've had occasion where people will answer the door in not the most suitable attire, shall we say, for public viewing. I don't know how much further to go into this, but yeah, definitely opening the door in towels which have fallen off and dressing gowns which haven't been completely covered. It definitely happened a couple of times over the past few years. MF Perhaps that's what they mean by "raw data". Beth, if I can come back to you, are there particular surveys which are considered to be especially important for us to be speaking to people in their homes in the way we've just been talking about? Ones that perhaps can't be carried out in other ways. BETH FERGUSON It's the more detailed financial surveys. So we've got the Family Resources Survey, the Living Costs and Food Survey, the Survey of Living Conditions, and the Household and Assets survey. They are quite long, more detailed surveys. The living costs and food survey, that requires the respondent to complete an interview, but then they also have to get hold of all their receipts of any expenditure for a two week period and annotate them and hand those over to the interviewer. So it's quite a detailed, involved survey. The Household and Assets survey, again it's dependent on how many people in the household can, you know, take up to two hours to complete and ask lots of detailed financial questions around savings and pensions and other things. If you're in the home, you can ask them to get the documents, support them to review the documents, make sure that they're actually giving the right information which, if they were to go online and do it themselves, there's no guarantee that they would get the right detail that we're actually looking for. MF So it's quite an intensive experience really, isn't it compared with simply asking someone to tick the boxes on a webpage? And I guess it very much depends on building a personal rapport with the survey participants? BF Absolutely. And that's the key. That's the key to a really successful interviewer is that ability to build rapport in a snapshot on the doorstep. You know, before they've had the opportunity to give a polite no, no thank you or sorry, not today. They reckon it is approximately 10 seconds on the doorstep to get that engagement and build that rapport, and then maintain that through what can sometimes be quite a lengthy interview. Keep that friendliness, that rapport going so that the person being interviewed remains engaged and keen to do it. MF Now Tammy, you've already told us about your previous financial background. Do you find that helps you when you're collecting data on economics or topics around money? TAMMY FULLELOVE Yes, I do. Like Beth's already mentioned, a couple of our financial studies go into people's income and expenditure. So having that sort of background I feel does help me, especially when they're speaking about what benefits they receive, what sort of things they pay out. It definitely does sort of give me the edge I do feel. MF That's great, because it's no secret is it Beth that the ONS, like other statistical organisations around the world, are finding it increasingly challenging to get people to take part in surveys. BETH FERGUSON Yeah, absolutely. I think it's got more and more challenging. Pre-pandemic it was getting more challenging, but the shift during and post-pandemic has been quite significant in terms of the number of willing people to do surveys for us. MF A shift in what direction? BF Fewer members of the public are willing to actually do surveys for us. Now whether that's because there's less trust in the government or actually, because of the pandemic, everybody's working from home and time is more limited. But no, it's definitely harder to get a response now. MF What techniques do we use then to try and change people's minds to get them to take part? BF At the moment we're doing a lot of work, certainly with the face-to-face field community - we're calling it a Respondent Engagement Programme. So looking out for clues and signs from, you know, when you approach the doorstep in the area, identifying the kind of things that may be key to them. Our statistics on things like CPI and RPI and, you know, the change in cost of food - that being constantly in the news gives us, kind of like, a lever to start an open conversation on the doorstep, particularly when we're looking at the financial surveys. EMMA PENDRE And also Miles. It's worth noting that all the surveys are voluntary, so the offer of incentives such as vouchers in exchange for the time taken to complete a survey will also continue to be significantly influential in maintaining our response rates. MF Absolutely Emma - offering people a small incentive has actually been proven to work hasn't it, and I guess in cost terms, it's better to spend some money on that rather than wasting it on chasing people who are never going to take part. EP Yes, that's right. The vouchers are very significant. They do help maintain our response rates. And again, being in a cost of living crisis at the moment. Our respondents see them as very helpful. MF But even with incentives, and as Beth has suggested, there's still a reluctance by some people to be involved in our surveys. Coming to you Tammy and Benjamin, as our people on the front line every day - upon your shoulders falls the responsibility for persuading people in many cases to actually take part. Do you have a standard approach, or do you tailor what you do according to particular circumstances? TAMMY FULLELOVE We definitely have a doorstep introduction, which has to cover a few different points to obviously make sure respondents are aware of the confidentialness of obviously the answers that that will be providing. But I do believe having a smile as soon as they open the door is the biggest thing - you're obviously trying to get them on board and trying to get them to either go online to complete the study or to make an appointment if they can't do it there and then to do the interview. It definitely has to be tailored I think, compared to who answers the door and obviously what reasoning they would like to help complete the study. Whereas some people as soon as you knock on the door, they've had the letters, they're waiting for you. They really want to help. So yeah, it definitely does depend on who's behind that door and obviously why they would like to help the Office for National Statistics. MF We live in a suspicious age and some people might think that there's something fishy afoot. BENJAMIN LAND That's the challenge Miles is people often initially they think it's a scam. I turn up with my badge and they're like, "Oh, you are real". And taking the time to explain to people once we've done the doorstep introduction that it's not a scam and it is legitimate, valuable research that we're carrying out and it certainly impacts everyone. MF I can imagine how tricky it must be to convince people sometimes, but you strike me as someone who isn't likely to be put off by that. BL Yes, yeah, I love a challenge. There was one lady last summer and every time she was like, "Oh, I'm busy. I've just come back from holiday, can you pop round the next week?" And it got to the point where she's like "I'm decorating my house." I said, Ma'am, that's fine. I'll come and help you decorate your house if you complete this survey. And she's like, "Oh, you're so persistent." I managed to get an interview and I was really pleased about that. So there's a little, you know, a little win in the bag. MF Well done, though I should point out that painting and decorating is not officially one of the ONS's services for getting people to take part in surveys. Tammy have you got experiences like that? TF Yeah, I've never got into painting and decorating, I'm gonna admit that. But it is a great feeling when the first time you knock on the door people don't want to help they're too busy, especially now post-COVID, with the amount of people working at home. So like Benjamin said, you're interrupting a Teams call. You're interrupting them doing some work. So you have to get over that first hurdle. But, you know, making that appointment, and sometimes they will make the appointment but then they either won't answer the phone, or they won't be in when you turn up, which can be frustrating. But yeah, when you actually do complete that study and they do feel like, you know, they have helped and you've gone above and beyond to secure that interview, it is definitely a great feeling. So maybe I should be offering painting and decorating services, maybe that would help. BL Don't take my tricks. No, the sense of achievement or, like Tammy says, you do get people that break appointments, you know, due to personal circumstances, and you somehow have to chase people and encourage them, but when you do secure the interview, and you get the data. There's something about when something's hard won you value it more. MF Yes, indeed. But how many people have heard of the ONS would you say? BL A lot of people now, because we were quoted a lot during the COVID statistics, regularly on the news and is quoted... I read the newspaper I appreciate not everyone does. But a lot of the data in newspapers it will state that it's been sourced from ONS. MF That recognition factor has helped help you on the doorstep. Do people get that the ONS is an impartial organisation operating at arm's length, certainly from ministerial government? BL No, no, I think we're often tarnished with the same brush as the TV licencing people that come round, especially in certain areas where I knock on doors. You know that they were met sometimes with hostility, to put it politely. MF Clearly some persuading to be done in a wider sense there as well. But is that your experience too Tammy? TF Yeah, they do believe that we are a government body and that we are influenced by a particular minister, or by the government that's in power at the time. If people are very anti-government on the doorstep it does create that hostility as the first sort of part of your introduction. MF Do you try to talk them around on that? TF Yeah, exactly like Benjamin said that really, you know, we don't have a minister in control of us. We are separate to the government. Everything is private, confidential. We don't share the information. You know, there's different a few things that you have to try on the doorsteps to try and get that buy-in from the respondents. MF Those of us who live and breathe statistics, of course, we wouldn't need to be persuaded to the value of taking part, but the challenge is to convince the whole population, or at least a representative sample of the whole population. It seems well removed from everyday life for a lot of people, but how many people do you think "get it" in terms of the value of statistics, you know, particularly economic indicators and high-level population data? TF I think it's great if you can get to an area. And you know, that statistics, whether it's been from some sort of government funding, have helped in the area. So you can say to someone on the doorstep, well, the reason why this school was built or this doctor surgery, or this park, or some sort of local information, really does that help to sort of say why they are important to provide the information. But on the flip side, speaking to students who will obviously do research looking at the ONS data, they might be using, obviously, in their own work and people who work in sort of the public sector, I think, do understand to a degree how important it is. But then, I think the vast majority and I think Benjamin will help me with this, don't really understand why we're collecting this or what benefit the information could have to them and where they live. BL That's right. I think a lot of people they have a global sense of it, but they don't understand the impact it has on their life and I work quite a lot in Bournemouth. And there's a lot there's a big student population as we've got Bournemouth University and the Arts University College, and a lot of the students do actually know or use the ONS data. I was actually at a student house yesterday in Winton and that makes my life much easier if I can link it to their own studies. MF In covering the whole of the country, of course, that means covering areas, which in statistical language are "hard to reach communities" - that's the phrase that's used. And frankly, of course, that often means areas of considerable social deprivation. Emma... How do we target those areas in particular, does that require extra attention or special techniques? EMMA PENDRE So our vision is to be fully inclusive by design. So that ensures that both the data and our workforce are fully representative of the population that we serve. The pandemic actually opened up opportunities and challenged how we have historically done things in the ONS. So to give a specific example here is around one of our key data sources, which is the Labour Force Survey. Before the pandemic we would write to addresses randomly, selected from our database of all UK households, and invite people to take part, and then knock on their doors to follow up if we didn't hear back from them. During the pandemic, when face to face interviews became impossible. We had to rely on people responding to the letter and taking part in the telephone interview. We saw pretty quickly that this was leading to bias in the responses, with particular demographics, such as the older population being more likely to respond where we were less likely to hear from people who sort of rented their properties. We knew we needed to speed up the work already underway to improve the survey. So fast forward two years and we now have transformed the Labour Force Survey and making it an online first survey which is now supported by telephone collection where needed. We've proven that to make the survey inclusive and reduce bias we also need to be knocking on doors. So for households invited to complete the survey from November 2022 They now might get a visit from a field interviewer who encourages them to complete the survey online or via a telephone interview, and we call this mode of field work "knock to nudge". MF So in other words, it's not enough just to send somebody a letter inviting them to take part - that's likely to go unheeded. But a friendly face at the door and a little bit of gentle persuasion, can have a really useful effect. EP Absolutely. Right. MF And this is very important, because the ONS has committed with the Inclusive Data Task Force to make a special effort to ensure everybody is represented in official statistics, and field communities have been involved in that work. Tammy, you operate in an area that's quite ethnically diverse. How do you bridge barriers in communities where English perhaps is not the first language for a significant number of people? TAMMY FULLELOVE So in the North West, we do have a number of regions where it's densely populated, very different cultural diversity, I suppose obviously, London would cover the same. And we do rely on interviewers who speak second languages, who can then translate the languages of the people on the doorstep to go through the interview, or even just to help on the actual doorstep to speak to people and advise what the study is about and to make the appointments. MF And Beth... when it comes to choosing field workers I guess it's very important as well that you've got people who are not only representative in the general sense of those communities, but actually have got some understanding, some feel, for the people they're dealing with. BETH FERGUSON That's part of the skill of a field interviewer. And I guess it comes from the fact that we've got interviewers from all different backgrounds, but it also comes as they learn the role, understanding which areas you know are going to be more challenging, where you're going to have to put a bit more effort in and understanding that actually... as an interviewer you can knock on a number of doors and, you know, you know who's going to be easy, you can get interviews relatively easy from various different sections of society. And you know that's going to be easy, but you also know that if you're going into an area that's more deprived, you're going to have to put more effort in, you know, and for some interviewers it comes immediately and, for others, it's learned over a period of time, where those more challenging areas are, what's actually going to work, what's going to resonate with the people behind the door that, you know, you're going to need to get that interview from to make sure the data is representative of everyone. MF Now, Emma, let's talk a little about the future of the field community, because obviously we hear so much now about big data and the ability to discover and gather insights from that. A mountainous array of data sources that can now give us rapid, fast data, covering just about every topic you can think of. But, nevertheless, the ONS sees value in continuing to run these very large, and very personal surveys face-to-face and over the phone. EMMA PENDRE Yeah, social surveys will continue to have an essential role to play in ONS's future, but also as part of a joined up data acquisition approach as well. I don't feel it's any longer a competition between whether we use surveys or other data sources. We have now come to realise that we actually need to work together and complement each other. So surveys are still fundamental in collecting the data that other sources cannot provide. And whilst new types of data sources are allowing us to more rapidly take stock of what's happening in our society and economy, they can't tell us everything or provide insights on things like personal opinions, attitudes, or exactly how people might be feeling at a given point in time. That will only ever be possible from talking to people. MF And on that note, can I just say that it's been a pleasure talking to all of you today. [OUTRO MUSIC] That's it for another episode of Statistically Speaking. Thanks once again for listening, and also thank you for taking part in our surveys. Without you all the incredibly valuable information we get from our surveys – which help to inform better decisions by your local council, for instance – would simply not exist. If you haven't yet had the opportunity to take part, and you get a knock on the door in future from one of our field interviewers, please do answer and take the time to respond. And if you happen to be in the Bournemouth area of course, and need some painting and decorating doing, then Benjamin's your man! You can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major platforms. You can also get more information by following the @ONSfocus feed on Twitter. Special thanks to producers Steve Milne and Julia Short. I'm Miles Fletcher and until next time... goodbye. ENDS

In this episode we discuss how the ONS has been working to transform the way we count the population, using new datasets to give more accurate, timely, and detailed measurements. On 29 June 2023, the ONS will be launching a public consultation on its proposals for a transformed population and migration statistics system. Understanding user needs will be essential evidence in making its recommendations to Government on the future of population statistics. More detail available at: www.ons.gov.uk To explain more about the public consultation, and answer your questions, the ONS is holding a series of free events in July 2023: National Statistician's launch event, London, 4 July 2023. (Online attendance also available) National Statistician's launch event, Cardiff, 6 July 2023. (Online attendance also available) Launch webinar, 13 July 2023. (Online only) You can also watch our transformation journey video, which is also available with British Sign Language (BSL), and in Welsh, with BSL. TRANSCRIPT MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to 'Statistically Speaking', the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher and this time we're looking at the future of our population statistics. How best to count all of the people, all of the time, and provide the most valuable information on changing characteristics that can drive excellent research and sound public policy. All of that is the subject of a major consultation exercise that's running during the summer of 2023. It's all about the Office for National Statistics proposals to create what's described as a sustainable and future proof system for producing essential statistics on the population. Joining me to unpack all that and explain how you can get involved in the consultation process is Jen Woolford, Director of population statistics here at the ONS. And we're joined once again by Pete Benton, Deputy National Statistician. Pete in a previous episode, you described how the once in a decade census has been the bedrock of our population statistics for a very long time, but now it looks like some pretty fundamental change could be on the way? PETE BENTON Well, that's the question. What's the future hold? We've been doing a census for over 200 years now once a decade, and it paints a beautiful, rich picture of our population that's fundamental to planning all of our services that we use: health care, education, transport, they all depend on the number and type of people living in a given area. But the question is, can we get more detail from other data sources every year, and might that mean that we don't need a census in 2031? Because we've got enough and that's the question that we are now talking about. MF Okay, so before we go into the detail of how we might achieve that, then paint a picture for our listeners. When we talk about population statistics, what are they exactly? And why are they so important and to whom? PB Well in between a census, we estimate the total population, by age and by sex and we do it nationally and we do it for local authorities. We estimate migration, how many people have moved into the country and how many people have moved out and also how people move around the country because that affects the population at any given area. And of course, we also do surveys that give us top level national level statistics about all kinds of things whether it's the labour market, or our health, things that the census asks and gives us detailed information for small areas, surveys, kind of paint a top level picture in between times. MF So to date, how have we gone about getting those numbers, and how good has that information been? PB So the census gives us the baseline once every 10 years. And we take that and we add births, we subtract deaths, we make an estimate of international migration. And we use that to adjust the data and we make an estimate of migration around the country, and that gives us those population estimates and those migration statistics. MF So to do that you need, or you'd have had to have drawn on something like the census, that universal survey of the whole population. PB That's right. The census is the benchmark by which we reset the system once a decade. But of course, after nine years, that information is getting more out of date and we do a census again, 10 years on to reset those statistics. And again, give us that rich picture. The question we're looking at now is how much can we get in between times? And how much do we then still need all the detail that a census would give us once a decade? MF So Jen, the world has moved on in those decades since the census in its present form has been going. You would think there's an opportunity out there to transform how we go about counting the nation. Give us the background to that. JEN WOOLFORD So we've been looking over decades to bring more and more data together to improve our population statistics. So Pete talked about how we look at the movement of people between censuses both in and out of the country and between different areas. And for some time now, we've been using what we call administrative data to understand those movements in the population. But now we have access to lots more data than we have in the past, and it gives us lots of opportunities to change how we're producing population statistics. So back in 2014, government first set out its ambition for us to build a population and migration Statistics System with administrative data at its heart. In 2018, we published a white paper, which set out our plans for a digital first census in 2021. But also that we should be making a recommendation to government about what the future of Population Statistics looks like, and that that recommendation should be based on a public consultation. And that's the consultation that we are going to be launching at the end of June. MF The challenge therefore, is to come up with something as least as good if not, preferably better, but without using a census. JW Absolutely. And people's needs are changing. So whatever we do has to respond to whatever the user needs are of the day. So in the past, where maybe populations didn't change so much at a local level so quickly, then having a census once a decade that gave you that detail, that detail would still be quite relevant 10 years later. But the population is changing so rapidly now that that decade old data can quite quickly become out of date. And an example of where this could be a problem for us and for policymakers is if we look at the COVID pandemic. During the pandemic, we saw really localised outbreaks of COVID infections, and we really wanted to understand what was going on in those areas and what the characteristics of people in those areas was to try and understand what might be leading to those outbreaks. But we didn't have census data, the 2021 census data then, we were having to go back to what those areas look like in 2011. So by transforming what we do, and having more up to date information about those local populations, it would have given us a much better idea of what might have been driving those local outbreaks. MF And there was another example perhaps during the pandemic when the government was trying to work out what proportion of the population had been vaccinated at local level relying on population statistics that because they were backed up by the census was subject to quite significant margins of error. JW That's right. So if you want to know what proportion of people in an area have been vaccinated, you need to know how many people are in that area in the first place. And if you're looking at a vaccination rate that's really high say kind of 90% that 10% is what's important, the 10% that aren't vaccinated. Now, you might only have a 5% error in your population estimates. But that could mean that you're thinking you've got 15% of the population to look at rather than the 10%. MF Pete, we've heard this term admin data (administrative data) already. And in that we're talking about all the information that gets collected whenever someone engages with public services, tax bills, benefits, going to the dentist, that kind of thing. Now, presumably that information has been collected for quite some time. So why is it only in the last few years that we're really starting to see and begin to use the potential of that data? PETE BENTON It takes time to develop the methods for doing it. So we've put a lot of effort into understanding the data sources and understanding the quality of the statistics that result so that we can be clear what we can and can't do, and that we can show that to the people that use the data to make decisions in order to understand the quality of what they're getting and give us their views of that. MF Can you think of some examples of administrative data as already being used effectively in official statistics, the sort of things that the ONS produces. PB Well we've always used them actually, when we produce our population statistics. We estimate the local population using the number of people registered with a GP and how that changes over time. So it's not new, it's just that we're expanding what we might be able to do here to try and get so much greater benefit every year, to improve decision making every year for all of our public service planning. MF And the opportunity, as Jen has already suggested, to link that data to understand how different groups, down to really quite small groups and local level and by different characteristics, are being affected by certain issues. PB That's right. Different datasets tell us different things. So there are datasets that tell us about educational achievement and there are datasets that tell us about household income, for example. And by bringing those together, we can understand the implications of education per outcomes of household earnings so we can really start to tie together the kind of public services that we get and the outcomes that we get as households. MF Now the possibilities of all this, of course, of being able to bring all this data into one place is a very exciting one from an analytical point of view, but from the point of view of the public and individual citizens at the same time, you could see why some people might be concerned about this, both from an ethical and a secure point of view. PB Well, when you think about it, this is nothing new for ONS. We've been doing a census for over 200 years and we keep those data safe we always have done, and we also do surveys every year of households on very sensitive topics. Some of them are people's experiences of crime or their health for example, and we do surveys of businesses to understand the economy and produce our statistics about GDP and inflation. Those data are all sensitive, and we keep them all very securely. So in one sense, there's nothing new here. We are good at this. We know how to keep data secure. It's all anonymized. So there is never anything published that identifies an individual and even within ONS, the analysts only get to see anonymous data. MF And very important to state, is it not, that it's not a question of building up pictures of individuals. It's always from a statistical point of view. It's the numbers we're interested in and not the people. PB Absolutely! We don't care about Peter Benton or Miles Fletcher, we care about the picture it paints of the nation. It's the statistics that come from it. And we are absolutely strict about confidentiality. MF Jen, other countries of course are wrestling with this as well and adopting and trying new kinds of systems. What's been the experience internationally? JEN WOOLFORD So you're right, lots of countries are looking at new and innovative ways to create the population statistics bringing lots of different sources together. We all operate in slightly different contexts. So in Scandinavia, for example, they've been producing population statistics like this for a long time. But those are countries that have population registers, which means their context is very different from ours. And to be absolutely clear here, we're not looking at building a Population Register. We're looking at creating statistics from bringing together different data sources. And there are a number of countries who are in the same position as us. So for example, Australia and New Zealand, and they are looking to try and develop similar systems for producing population statistics as we are and we're working very closely with those countries to share our learning and to share the methods as we're developing them so that we're all learning from each other. MF So talking about the potential of these new data sources, including all the administrative data, can you give us some examples of what we're not doing that we might be able to do much better in future? JW There are a number of advantages and improvements we can make for greater use of data. Firstly, in the existing system, we use the census to benchmark our population estimates. So in between censuses, we estimate population change with births and deaths and migration, but we tend to get a bit of a drift in those population estimates. So we use the census then to benchmark it and bring those estimates back in line. With this new system, we're looking at not just estimating the change but also estimating the number of people at a point in time, so that hopefully will reduce that drift that we get in population estimates and mean that over the 10 year period, our estimates are more accurate. The other thing that can happen between censuses is you can get quite a lot of change in local areas and the data we have doesn't reflect that change, because it's based on the previous census. So an example here could be that the conflict in Ukraine has led to a number of Ukrainian refugees moving to England and Wales since we conducted the census. So in some areas, the makeup of the population there will have changed significantly since we conducted the census. And in our existing system, we wouldn't be able to pick that up. With our new system, we'd be able to pick up that localised population change much more quickly than we can at the moment. MF And presumably that would be of enormous benefit for local authorities, where everyone would be trying to provide services down to local level, because you've got a much more up to date picture of how many people are there, and we saw recently when the census results were published, some local authority areas have experienced big changes in population. JW Absolutely. The other thing to be aware of with the census is that it was conducted during the pandemic and it was conducted during a period of lockdown. What we saw was that people moved out of some of the metropolitan areas during that period of lockdown, back to whether that's the kind of parental homes for students or for young members of the workforce. So the populations in those metropolitan areas will have changed quite rapidly as the country opens back up and as people move back into those metropolitan centres. The approach that we're taking now should be able to pick up that change much more quickly, not just the numbers of people, but also the characteristics of people who are moving within the UK. MF And how does this benefit individual citizens? What's this going to mean for the public generally? JW So better data means better decisions. It means that better planning can be made for things like school places, better planning for public transport, where to put hospitals, where to put sports centres. All of these decisions are based on our data about the population and by having better data, you'll have better decisions. MF And you'll be able to target services and be able to target spending as well on a much more short term basis, rather than having to make decisions coming along into the future when circumstances could be changing. JW Absolutely. Or the decisions might still be long term, but you'll be able to monitor the impact that those decisions are having much more closely than you can at the moment. MF So Jen, is there anything we won't be able to get from such a system? And we've heard some people suggest, for example, that we wouldn't be able to get that very small level data, the street level data that's so useful from a census, and survey purists point, of the census as a great way of capturing social history. JW We're always faced with trade offs when we make decisions about things like our methods, or anything in life, and there are likely to be trade offs here. What we've done to date is we've done lots of research that shows that there's bags of potential here with what we can do with administrative data and the understanding of the population we can get from administrative data. There are still outstanding questions for us. So there are some characteristics, for example, people who provide unpaid care, that isn't available from administrative data and we still need to work out how we will provide that level of data. The census gives such a wealth of information about things like ethnicity where we get down to really granular classifications of ethnicity, it may not be possible to do that with administrative data. However, on the flip side, we can produce statistics that we didn't get from the census using administrative data. So on the 2021 census, we didn't collect information about income. But we've published research that shows that we can get down to small area estimates of household income using a combination of administrative data. We've also published research which shows that we can produce the kind of variables that we do get from the census. So we've published research on ethnic group and also on housing stock, types of housing, and we've also managed to get to linking different admin data together so that we can look at income by ethnic group, and housing type by ethnic group. So producing what we call multivariate statistics through linked administrative data. We still have a programme of research to really understand how far we can replicate what we get out of the census. But the consultation that we're about to launch is really about understanding whether what we can demonstrate and deliver with administrative data answers user needs. And if it doesn't answer some of our user needs, what are those needs, and so we can then plan our future research to make sure we're focused on the right things. MF And of course, it's genealogists - people who love to trace family trees - who find the census data so valuable. JW Absolutely. And in the existing system census data is archived for 100 years and then made available to genealogists and others to really explore their family history. In the new system we have a wealth of data that we could be using to understand the population and we need to work with genealogists to understand exactly what it is that would be useful for us to archive for future posterity. So although that's not the focus of the consultation, genealogists are very welcome to respond to the consultation and let us know more about their needs, or we'll have future conversations to make sure that we're clear on what the need is here and how we can best answer it. MF And that's what the consultation is, to a large extent, all about. JW Absolutely. MF And it's important to understand that these proposals haven't just been whipped out of thin air, a considerable amount of work has already gone on getting us to this point in time hasn't it. Can you talk through some of the research that's already happened and some of the evidence that has been provided to suggest that a new and transformed system might well be the way forward? JW Yes, this has been a long programme of work where we have focused on two different types of research. One is around improving our estimates of the population and being able to get to small area population estimates more frequently than we can at the moment. And the other is around the characteristics of the population. So what can we say about ethnicity or employment down to local areas. On the first of those, we've done a lot of work talking to local authorities about the estimates that we've produced and their understanding of our outputs and whether they match with what they see on the ground. We have compared what we get through administrative data to the figures that we got from the 2021 census. So lots of work comparing the outputs and talking to our users about how credible those outputs are. We're also looking at how can we improve our estimates of migration, in particular international migration, and we've been working very closely with the Home Office and the data that they hold to understand more about the flows of people in and out of the country and the reasons for those flows. So people coming as international students, people coming to work, people coming along humanitarian routes, and we've built already lots of improvements into our migration statistics using administrative data and we've got lots of plans going forward for even more improvements that we can deliver there. We also have an expert panel, the methodological assurance review panel, who quality assure our methods. So these are people who are real experts in statistics and methodology, who have looked at the detail of the methods that we're using to produce those outputs and check that those are sensible and the best methods that we could be using. MF So to sum up then Jen, how far ultimately could this new system take us? JW Well, the sky's the limit, really. As more and more data become available, there's more and more we can do, as our methods improve. As our computing power improves, there's more and more we can do to really understand the population, its characteristics, how it moves around. So this is going to be an ongoing programme of work for years to come. MF So Pete, tell us then about the specifics of the consultation. Who is it for and what do we hope to get out of it? PETE BENTON Well, it's for anybody who would like to respond. We in particular, want to hear from people who use the statistics to get their view on the balance between all that detail that the census gives us once a decade compared with the frequency of having more information every year, and we want to understand people's perspectives on those trade offs, but anybody is welcome to respond to it. And of course, this is just the continuation of a conversation that we've been having for years. We're continually talking to the big stakeholders, the big users of our statistics across government, in local government, in the commercial sector to understand their needs for statistics. So this is a culmination of a conversation that's been going on for years. MF Okay, so when does the consultation start? And how exactly do people go about taking part? PB Well, it'll be an online consultation. It'll start in June and it will end in October. MF Okay. So the consultation completes in the autumn. Big question - what happens then? PB So we will take a good look at all those responses we will understand what people have told us and then 12 weeks later, we will put out our response to that consultation summarising what we've heard. Following this, the National Statistician will make recommendations to government based on all of ONS' research and the findings of the consultation to put administrative data at the core of a transformed population and social statistics system, and that recommendation will also consider the future of the census arrangements. MF So there you have it, a one in a million opportunity – or more pedantically, one in 59.6 million, given that's the accurate population of England and Wales according to the last census - to share your views on an incredibly important piece of work. Consultation opens on June 29th and runs through to the end of October. If you'd like to find out more about it and all of our transformation plans for population and migration statistics, you can do so by visiting the ONS website: www.ons.gov.uk Or you can attend one of the free in person and online consultation events that the ONS has organised in July, details for which you can find on this episode's podcast page, as well as online through our social media channels, and the ONS website. Thanks to Jen Woolford and Pete Benton for taking us through everything today. And thanks as always to you for listening. You can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major platforms. You can also get more information by following the @ONSfocus feed on Twitter. I'm Miles Fletcher and from myself, and our producer Steve Milne, thanks for listening. ENDS

In this episode of Statistically Speaking we shine the spotlight on local data and look at how good statistics for small areas make for better targeted policy interventions, and more effective use of valuable public resources. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher and in this episode we're talking about local data for local people - How good statistics for small areas make for better targeted policy interventions, and more effective use of valuable public resources. We're going to explore, for example, how new data sources are helping to precisely calibrate economic circumstances and local communities. How we may even be able to calculate the GDP of your street or village. Now many economic forces are of course global. Some of the solutions to issues like competitiveness, productivity and inequality might begin on our doorsteps. As ever, we have the cream of ONS expertise here on hand, this time in the shape of Emma Hickman, Deputy Director of the ONS sub national stats division, and Libby Richards, Deputy Director for UK wide coherence and head of an important new initiative called ONS Local, which we'll be hearing about in full. Also joining us is Stephen Jones, Director of Core Cities UK. Its aim is to promote the role of our great cities in creating a stronger fairer economy and society. So Emma, to set the scene for us first then please explain precisely if you would, the value of really good local stats. EMMA HICKMAN So the needs are multiple, really. I think the most important thing is that we are seeing a huge increase in locally targeted policymaking and that's at a range of different levels across government. So in central government, we see near the department for levelling up Housing and Communities kind of really wanting to think about how do they target policies that are going to help to level up the country but equally what we're also seeing is an increase in devolution which is giving more power to local areas and local policymakers. And so it's really also important that they have the statistics and the data that they need and the evidence that they need to make really, really good decisions for their local areas. And they can do that in a really powerful way because they also have knowledge of their local areas. And then finally, you know, actually for citizen kind of uses of our data and statistics really one of the inclusive data principles that people are able to see themselves in the data and that they feel that the data and the statistics that we're producing as an office represent them. And so having statistics and data available at really geographies that are very meaningful to people is hugely helpful in making sure that as a country, right across the UK that we are kind of reflective of the experiences of really kind of a wide range of people and you know, local economies and end users and understand kind of how they're experiencing that as well. MF I guess one of the fundamental principles here is that it's it's local knowledge. It's all very well and everybody thinks they know that local area, but to understand all local areas, we need comparable statistics and data produced to consistent standards. EH Yes, absolutely. And that's, I mean, that's one of the key challenges. I think we'll probably kind of come to talk about a little bit later, but you know, absolutely. And that's really about understanding you know, where are the where are the inequalities within regions, as well as between regions? I think we have a lot of information available about, you know, kind of regions, but actually, we also know that some of the inequalities that people really feel are much greater actually within regions and between them and kind of being able to draw that out of data and statistics in a comparable way I think is really important for helping sort of policymakers and decision makers to understand where best to target resources. MF Stephen, from a policy perspective, describe the demand for local data at the moment, what sorts of policy solutions are policy makers coming up with and how are those best informed by really good data? STEPHEN JONES I think it covers all branches really of policymaking. I think as Emma was saying, the kind of need for really understanding and having a kind of quantitative basis for what's happening in a place is, is actually absolutely crucial for designing policy, whether that's policy about trying to make the economy grow, whether that's policies aimed at trying to reduce disadvantage and challenge facing individuals, whether that's policy about delivering the most effective and efficient public services in the right places at the right times, all of those things, whether that's done in public or private sector need to be built on a good evidence base, good understanding. I think the other thing I would add to the richness of local data can do you can kind of contextualise and understand, you know, a number on its own doesn't mean a huge amount, but if you know that you are 10% higher or 20% lower than your neighbouring place. Or the city of the same size. It's those kinds of contextual dimensions that really help nuance and finesse your policymaking. MF And it does come back to that question of trust in data than to make those comparisons in a really reliable and meaningful way. Which I guess is where the ONS, the Office for National Statistics, where we come in. Now Libby tell us about ONS Local. This is an initiative which is all about making sure that that really high quality data is available for the policy makers LIBBY RICHARDS ONS Local is our advisory service that is staffed by ONS analysts who are based in every nation of the UK and every region of England. And the idea is that we are here to help local policy makers, regional observatories, and lots and lots of different users of sub national data to really understand the enormous offer from ONS in terms of local data. Having said that, it's also very much about those working relationships as well. Stephen's talked a lot about context and understanding the nuances and so understanding the situations and challenges that are happening locally is absolutely key to ONS Local helping local areas understand that context better. MF The big ONS surveys of course have long carried, many of them are typically think about the Labour Force Survey over a very long period of time, carried a great wealth and local data that obviously gets lost in the national headlines that these data releases generate. But is it a question of getting better value out of what the ONS is already creating or actually about sourcing new data from different sources? LR It's a bit of both, very much, in being able to take people through what we already have when understanding their questions, particularly when multiple local areas are asking the same question that's really maximising what ONS already do. However, Emma's side of the house in particular, less so in the regionally and nationally distributed ONS Local is really about developing those new statistics getting into how do we get down to hyper localised sort of 400 to 1200 household building block data that then allow people to build those areas that means something to them. Emma, I don't know if you want to chip in? EH Yeah, very happy to. There's two strands I think to that Miles. I think there's one which is about, you know, how do we make the most of survey data and kind of new administrative data sources together to enable that level of granularity? And then the second part is actually when we talk about administrative data probably, that might not really mean things to lots of people. That's data that is collected for a different purpose, but collected on a on a very, very routine basis. And there are actually a fair number of new sources of that kind of data that we're able to get into the ONS. MF That's interesting. Can you give us an example of that? EH So, I say relatively new. I mean, I think ONS have had this data for quite some time now. But in order to get the level of granularity that we need on Gross Value Added statistics, for example, which is a measure of productivity, we use HMRC's VAT data for businesses and then we can link that to kind of our survey data and think about how can we then apportion estimates down to the level of geography that we need, knowing that the survey is the place where we've been able to ask the question that we really want to know the answer to and then we can use the other data to model sort of some of the other granularity that we need. The other thing is we've been really successful and using card payments data throughout the pandemic to inform the government's response. And we've recently successfully acquired a really exciting new data source from Visa, it's aggregated, so there's absolutely no way of identifying people in the data, but they've aggregated it at a really granular level of geography for us. So again, it would be in the region of probably hundreds of households, but actually that's granular enough for us to get some really, really good insights into kind of how you know, consumer spending is kind of playing out in the local economy. And there are all sorts of applications for that, that we're really excited to be to be able to start taking forwards now that we've got that data in the office. MF So just with those three very important data sources, suddenly we're creating right down to that very micro level, as you say, 400 to 1200 households really quite a full picture of local economic activity. EH And the really exciting thing about that is that people can then build their own geographies as well from that. So you know, traditionally in statistics, we tend to produce data at the level of an authoritative boundary like a local authority, but actually you might really want to know about, I don't know, West Midlands Metro, for example, they extended the line a few years ago, you might really want to know about local economic activity around that and actually, that's not going to be captured in the sort of administrative boundaries and so having the data at that level of granularity really allows people to build a geography that sort of area of interest or importance to them in some way. MF Creating a GDP of your street or village. EH Indeed. MF Okay, that's the project for now, but it comes across with some pretty significant challenges. It comes back to this problem of comparability doesn't it, and particularly if you're looking across the UK contexts there. We've got different government structures, we've got some devolved areas, we've got areas and we've got big metropolitan authorities as well. How difficult is it to be able to standardise and to make uniform the data right across that rather complex government picture? EH Incredibly so. To the point where we don't necessarily aim for uniformity. It's very much about how do we make sure that we're able to tell stories that are coherent and consider that UK wide angle when thinking about the nations but also thinking about how do you enable that comparability that's very tricky. And the more and more devolution happens, the more and more difficult that actually can become, particularly when you're looking, for example, at health data where it is a devolved policy area across the four nations. But actually, if you live on the border, let's say between Wales and England, actually, you may well be getting your health care on the opposite side of the border from which you live and therefore you've got to be able to have an opportunity to consider that. MF There's the issue then of course of samples as well. And the more local you go, of course the less representative your sample is going to be. EH Absolutely. And that gets particularly tricky. Even at a nation level where we're thinking about Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, for example, the opinions and lifestyle survey, actually, it's quite difficult to find out what that looks like for Northern Ireland. And ideally, we'd want to be able to get more granular than the nation level, but sample sizes make that really tricky to still be representative. And so either we'd need to expand the survey to get that level of granularity or we have to actually say the best we can do is this. MF Yes, because there is only one holy universal survey of course and that is the census and that only happens once every 10 years. I recall when we were running the big COVID infection survey at the height of the pandemic, even a massive data gathering operation like that. We could still only end up getting it down to sub regional level which is what units are for half a million people. So it does show doesn't it how important it is to make the most of that admin data which can be extremely comprehensive sometimes EH I, you know, completely agree with you there Miles on administrative data and how important it is to be able to kind of think about innovative ways to combine that data with our survey data to get a more granular level of information. I talked a bit earlier about kind of estimates of gross value added and I can say that's just that's a measure of productivity and it feeds into the largest component of GDP and in local areas. What we were able to do there as I mentioned kind of earlier, we took HMRC's VAT tax data which is collected for all businesses that pay VAT, we were able to link that to a data set that ONS hold called the interdepartmental business register and the information that's held on that is all of the information about business structure, so has a VAT reference in there so we can link it to HMRC data. But the most important information on there for us was actually that where the local units are, so for example, Tescos will have a headquarters somewhere but you probably have a Tesco Express quite close to where you live. And that's one of the local units so tells us where the local units are and their postcodes and it also tells us how many employees work in those local units. And so we can make an assumption like productivity for all employees in the organisation is the same, and then we can look at actually what the productivity for that firm is top level and then divide that by the number of employees to kind of say, well, actually, if all employees are equally productive, this local unit has a productivity sort of measure of this much, and then we can aggregate that back up again to the sort of area so you know, really kind of key to be able to understand those methods, but there are some other challenges as well, but I can probably come back to those. MF That's fascinating stuff. I mean, you could point to a certain, perhaps a certain enterprise, a certain employer, that is considered to be, you know, fundamental to a local economy. But this way, you can actually really press precisely quantify what that importance is. EH And I think that's one of the challenges because actually as a as an office, we don't want to be disclosing the productivity of any single firm or any single business because that is personal information. So one of the things that we've had to do in very local areas where there are what we call dominant businesses or dominant organisations who have like most of the productivity for that area, is we've actually, you know, I'm gonna be honest, we've we've sort of masked it a bit. And so we've kind of averaged a few local areas together so that you still have a building block level of data, you still have a building block so you can build a bigger area, but you don't actually have any businesses that are considered dominant within the statistics that we produce. That's taken quite a complex algorithm to be able to achieve that. I won't go into too many details just to say that it is a consideration and the challenge that we've had to really innovate to be able to be able to publish that information. MF It's important to stress Isn't it that all the usual principles of non-identification and confidentiality apply in this work as much as they do anywhere else across the ONS. EH Yeah, absolutely. MF Give me a couple of examples of some specific bits of work that you've been doing then. There's been an analysis of towns and out of town locations particularly and how local employment growth is happening outside of town and city centres. EH My team kind of over the last sort of couple of years have been doing a whole series of analysis of towns in particular, like I say, that's a geography that people can really relate to, you know, lots of people kind of live in a town or a city. And that's something that's a bit more understandable than maybe a local authority and is a bit closer to them than the region for example. Our recent analysis on towns and out of town locations when we looked at employment growth, I think has some quite important findings actually for transport planning. For example, what we found is that actually employment growth is not happening the most in town centres, it's happening more and faster within two kilometres of the edges of a town of the town boundaries. And so what we think it might be happening is that kind of employment growth is actually happening in industrial parks are situated on that cusp between town and kind of rural areas. And when you're thinking about, you know, how people might travel to work, for example, I think it's really, really important to have those insights so that we're not just planning transport routes, for example, that go into town centres MF And what other insights have we been generating? EH So another recent piece was a new piece of analysis on the nighttime economy. So I think lots of people will think about the nighttime economy as being predominantly about bars and restaurants and obviously, you know, they will have a really, really big impact on those sort of industries during the pandemic. But in fact, what we find is that actually the nighttime economy in rural areas are surprisingly busy and that's because we also have a nighttime economy that is around health and health care. Nurses, for example, kind of working night shifts and that sort of thing. And then the other kind of aspect to it is sort of warehousing and transport as well. There's often kind of an overnight element to that, too. And again, having that understanding of like how that kind of plays out in different parts of the country is kind of a really, really useful. We originally did it just for London, interestingly, and then we've done this kind of new analysis looking at the whole country, which was really interesting. Other things produced quite recently as well are an expansion of job quality indicators of work across the UK, which is important because if you just look at kind of employment numbers, you're not really getting a sense of, you know, you get a sense of who's employed and who's unemployed in terms of characteristics of people, but what you don't get is like how good is the job quality for those people and actually, job quality is probably quite important for a lot of individuals and in terms of how good they feel about kind of going into work and how productive they are? And all of those those kinds of things, MF That also forms the understanding doesn't it of why some people have opted out of employment in recent years. EH Absolutely. And it also can tell us about things like how many people are working part time who want to be working full time for example. Or vice versa, you know, so there's kind of like a measure of underemployment in there. It tells us a little bit about what percentage of people are working on zero hours contracts versus permanent contracts, all those kinds of things, I think are quite, you know, sort of quite important. MF Some other developments well worth pulling out as well. I think we've been able to produce very interesting picture of comparative housing affordability down to quite local level. EH Yes, I think our main housing affordability release goes down to local authority level, but we have produced actually a range of housing affordability statistics, the local authority, one that we published recently probably been the most comprehensive, we're also doing a lot of work on the housing data that's collected through the census as well to understand dwellings and their characteristics as well. You know, how many dwellings are occupied and versus non occupied and how that varies by different parts of the country as well. Housing affordability in particular tells us about how people's earnings relate to what they spend on housing, and obviously that has huge impact on again, kind of, you know, people's disposable income at the end of the day. So I think it's certainly an important one. MF So lots of fresh insights that are coming from the ONS and local statistics, but it's important to point out that a lot of this you could be doing for yourself if you're so inclined, and we've brought forward a tool called and it's much more exciting than the name implies, actually. It's called the Sub National Indicator Explorer tool. Libby, can you explain how that operates? And some of the really interesting insights that you can generate with it. LR So the Sub National Indicators Explorer is something that we know and have known for a while that users desperately want. So often, if you are trying to understand a particular place, you have to go to lots of different sources to actually find information about one area. So for example, if you want health you have to go to one place. If you want to find out about education, you have to go to another and find your area and then collate that yourself. What the sub national indicators Explorer allows you to do is bring together all of those relevant indicators into one place so you can find your local authority and compare it with say up to three others across more than 40 different metrics ranging from gross median pay, right the way through to healthy life expectancy, and so you have this incredibly useful tool where you go, I want to know everything about place x and you get it all in one place. Our intention is to develop that a little bit further and eventually head into some of the developments that have come out recently around the census where you can build your own maps, build your own areas and flexibly bring different data things together. Alongside that we've also been thinking about how else we might be able to compare other areas and the team have recently done an analysis that clusters local areas together under metrics similar to and including some of the same from the sub national indicators tool and so that explores places that are statistically similar using things like regional growth metrics, and we can see what different parts of the country could potentially learn more from each other. They might be facing similar challenges and therefore getting beyond their local area to kind of join up with other areas across the country and this also gives some really weird potentially interesting insights. MF Yes, which shows that despite the north south divide, about which we continue to hear a great deal some places in North and South have a great deal in common with each other. LR Indeed, and actually places for example, in the south may be very different. So Portsmouth down on the south coast can look a lot more like places in the Northeast than possibly other areas on the south coast. Portsmouth is in a cluster of higher connectivity but lower health and well being whereas neighbouring Havant is in a much higher health and wellbeing and moderate educational performance cluster and you can see this all over the place. So for example, Newcastle upon Tyne is actually very similar to the New Forest and Havant and in fact, so is York and Great Yarmouth. And so they're actually disperate across the country, but mostly situated in particular areas. However, if Havant or the New Forest is facing a particular problem, maybe going and having a chat with York might actually be quite helpful depending on the problem. MF That seems an excellent moment to bring in Stephen Jones as director of Core Cities. Stephen, the local picture, of course, is much more complex than that old cliche about the north south divide. But what work are you doing with the ONS and with others, to produce a really informed picture which policymakers can then act on to deal with these issues of localised deprivation, economic disadvantage and so forth. SJ Firstly, we're doing a piece of work as Core Cities with the Royal Society of Arts called Urban Futures Commission, looking at the kind of like what's the long term potential and trajectory of our biggest cities in the UK and within that, you know, this is the sort of position of why do UK cities relatively underperform compared to the international peers in the developed world is quite a well established problem that's decades old. What some of the new data available is allowing us to kind of really get a better handle on is, why is that the case what is happening to for example, a fairly recent new release of fixed capital formation, so investment data, at a local authority level split by the different asset classes that the ONS have produced is really helpful to bring an understanding and a kind of richness to basically what both public and private investment we can see that our big cities outside of London have a relatively lower levels of public and private investment, particularly then if you strip out real estate investment. So investment in capital and business intangibles, those things are particularly low. So not all of our core cities, the total investment in Greater Manchester most recently was about 9000 pounds per head, central London, it's 55,000 pounds per head. If you go down to Newcastle I think it's down to 3000 pounds per head. You know, that's a dramatic difference in levels of public and private investment. MF Does having much more reliable local data, perhaps hold with it the promise that the policy interventions that result from it can be therefore much more effective? SJ So completely. You know, one of the things that I'm quite excited about in terms of using the local GVA data that Emma was talking about as a new release is there's been a whole host of different policy interventions over the last 10, 20, 30 years trying to kind of create economic activity within zones areas and whatever was saying about the ability to build your own geographies, I think is really has real potential in it. So whether it's the enterprise zones of the Heseltine era or the enterprise zones of the George Osborne era, whether it's free ports policy more recently, whether it's transport led regeneration schemes around new road junctions or new rail stations, whether it's the role of universities, science parks, investment in innovation zones, the government recently announced in the budget just a few weeks ago, the question of investment zones, all of these policies, they are some of the national ones – there's many more when you think locally are attempting to try and create concentrated economic activity within certain locations. One of the main criticisms in a policy sense is that that activity will just get displaced from elsewhere. If the business that is currently located three miles up the road will move to within the zonal boundary to gain sort of benefits and advantages that are being offered there. Well, we'll kind of be able to tell whether that's true or not, by actually looking to see whether the areas nearby have sort of reducing GVA compared to the areas that are growing and I think being able to properly evaluate policy interventions over the last 30 years to really then decide, well, is it worth pursuing policies like the investment zone announcement of recent weeks or actually should we be trying other approaches? I think that that kind of insight is going to be incredibly valuable. MF Indeed, and perhaps also with data at a much lower level and much more micro local level as well, perhaps much smaller, more precisely targeted interventions might be what's called for. SJ Exactly and I think that again, picking up some of what Emma was saying earlier, some of this data is a tool for local authorities. This has huge potential sort of exactly where are the jobs located? Are they in the town centre? Are they in the business park on the edge of town? What time of day is that activity happening? Is it shift patterns versus is it concentrated in the sort of 945 when we know these things, whether you're sitting there working out your local plan and working out where you're going to zone, your new employment land where you're working out whether you're going to offer any business rate incentives in a business improvement district when you're sitting there working out and what time of day do you need to have your trading standards officers available, these kinds of planning decisions day to day when you're trying to think about what your refuse collection plans and patterns are those things that local authorities are doing on just managing public services bringing together those different aspects having that sort of insight to know what's happening, when and what's most effective, we'll just make our policies more efficient. And in a world where public finances are constrained, particularly so for local authorities and have been for a while or be able to use the funding that is available more efficiently and the delivery of those services I think is hugely beneficial. The other thing that I'm interested in I think, is an area where we as Core Cities can can work with the ONS and others going forward is how do we make more advantage and take more advantage of the data, administrative data that is held locally? So if you think of an average local authority, they have huge amounts of data about that area. Whether that's through kind of council tax dates on collections, arrears, council tax discounts, whether that's through business rate data, whether that's through library card membership, planning applications, the list goes on. Obviously, for the same reasons, as we've talked about the need for protecting individuals and protecting data confidentiality, some of that data, you know, we'll need to be careful about how do we use but at the moment, it's largely sitting there on databases being under explored. If we can get to a world where we can start matching some of that data with some of the data sources that the ONS are making available, and then matching it with data sources such as Emma was talking about that the private sector can bring to the table like Visa and others. I think it's in bringing those sort of insights together. You can actually really, really develop the rich pictures. I can see Libby you would like to come in, so I might just pause there. LR Yeah. I was just gonna say Stephen there mentioned about utilising locally held local data alongside national level local data, sort of your ONS data, your government department data, and actually that is one of the things that we're really hoping that ONS Local can help with by having people locally with very good relationships with those individuals in local government, local authorities, regional observatories, actually, if we can pull together their administrative data with what we have at the national level and help with some of that analytical insight because also aware, as Stephen said, local governments are constrained and resources actually, if ONS can help in that analytical insight, then even better that we can help along the way. MF So Emma, an exciting vision of the future there and the possibility to be really improving local and regional policy interventions. What's coming next? EH The really big exciting development that I just wanted to mention is the kind of opportunity for collaboration and I think ONS as an organisation are on the cusp of opening up the Integrated Data Service more widely, and actually, we've been working really, really closely with that team over the last couple of years or so to understand what a good data asset would look like for subnational. And to kind of start to make sure that we can do some of the data engineering to make that micro data. So when I talk about micro data, I'm talking like response level information from surveys kind of available in a secure and safe way and also in a way that's easily linkable, so that you can easily pick up something about health and something about quality jobs and link them together in that service and do the analysis that you were talking about. That's one of the most exciting developments. I think that's on the horizon in terms of how we'll be able to collaborate and kind of use and share data more widely, keeping in mind that privacy aspect. So you know, the idea is that all of that data is anonymized before it goes into the service and then things will be in kind of really strictly controlled through it. But there is that opportunity for those wider collaborations. I don't know Libby, whether you wanted to come in a little bit on some of the other kind of future developments as well. LR Yes, so over the last 9 to 10 months we have co-designed the ONS Local service going out across the country, doing round tables, getting people together in the room, putting forward our vision of what ONS Local might look like but very much saying "tell us why we're wrong, what doesn't work for you, tell us what we're missing". So really building that service with our users, and now we're really beginning to fly now that we have people across the country. Other bits of new work also on the horizon include new data looking at the effect of place on geographic mobility across towns and cities, so we can follow those trends as people move around the country and can help us build pictures of places, track educational outcomes and workforce trends by area, at a level that we've not been able to do in the past. We've also talked a lot today about the Gross Value Added (GVA) data, and that obviously focuses on businesses. The next innovation for those sorts of granular statistics is more looking at the households aspect, and therefore allowing more targeted policymaking for those bespoke areas, and understand those hyper-local affects that are so important at the moment, particularly when considering all those devolution aspects. MF Some insight there on the work underway here to ensure people across the UK see themselves in our data. Many thanks to our guests today Emma Hickman, Deputy Director of ons sub national stats division, Libby Richards, Deputy Director for ONS Local and UK wide coherence, and Stephen Jones, Director of Core Cities UK. I'm Miles Fletcher and thank you to you for listening. If you've got a question or comment about these ONS podcasts, you can find us on Twitter @ONSfocus. You can also subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all other major platforms. Many thanks to our producer for this episode at the ONS Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye. ENDS

In this episode, we focus on a powerful example of when the numbers alone are simply not enough. The most recent Census has told us how many people have some form of disability but to really understand the nature of those disabilities and the needs of people reporting them we need to do a lot more work. Guiding us through this work, is Helen Colvin, joint lead for Census and Disability Analysis at the ONS; Shona Horter, Head of Qualitative Research at the ONS Centre for Equalities and Inclusion; David Ainslie, Principal Analyst in the Analytical Hub of ONS and Matt Mayhew, Senior Statistical Officer in the Policy Evidence and Analysis Team. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Hello and welcome again to another edition of Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics podcast. In this series, we've spent a lot of time explaining how statistics can brilliantly illuminate important issues, and this time we're focusing on a powerful example of when the numbers alone are simply not enough. The most recent census has told us how many people have some form of disability and where they live. It's a good place to start of course, but to really understand the nature of those disabilities, and the needs of the people reporting them, we need to do a lot more work and that work is the subject of today's discussion. Here to guide us through it we have Helen Colvin, joint lead for Census disability analysis at the ONS; Shona Horter, head of qualitative research at the ONS Centre for equalities and inclusion; David Ainslie, Principal Analyst at the analytical hub of ONS; and Matt Mayhew, senior statistical officer in the policy evidence and analysis team. Helen to start with you, I mentioned the census there and those numbers showing us the scale of disability as defined by Census. Is it fair to say that census remains the sort of statistical bedrock of our understanding of disability - the single most important source? HELEN COLVIN Yes that's right. I'd agree with that. So it's the main source that covers the whole of our population. So it's the best truth that you have, if you like, of what our population is like, and the proportion of disabled people within our population. MF And these were people, responding in their households, to the question which said what precisely? HC It said: Do you have any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more? And if people answered yes to that, they were asked: Do any of your conditions or illnesses reduce your ability to carry out day to day activities? A lot, a little, or not at all. MF What did you have to answer to that to be classified as disabled? HC To be classified as disabled - If you answered that you had a long term condition which affects your day to day activities a lot or a little then we regarded that as somebody as disabled. And the reason for that is that at ONS we measure disability against the Equality Act definition of disability and that really identifies somebody as disabled if they have a long term condition, and if it limits their day to day activities. And we do that so that we're able to report against the progress on the Equality Act in the UK. MF And the key element it would seem that - obviously we're talking about disability - is your ability to do day to day tasks and a sustained limitation. HC That's right, that needs to be... to be disabled under the Equality Act there needs to be a long term thing which affects you for up to 12 months or more. And it needs to be something which does impact you on your ability to carry out day to day activities. And that's really something that is arguably focusing on the medical model of disability, so focuses on how you can't do things because of your impairment because of the environment around you. MF Now that question is slightly different from the one asked in 2011. Why was that changed? HC So in 2011, we asked a very similar question, but we did remove a prompt which asked people to include problems specifically related to old age and this really was about bringing it more in line with the Equality Act, which doesn't have that emphasis. Problems related to older ages still classified as disability, but it wasn't making it the same kind of focus of the question, and another part that we changed was to remove the word disability because of course, disabled means different things to different people. And we tried to measure it slightly more objectively by using our own definition rather than asking about people's own opinions if they were disabled. And this time we also included mental health within the question, and we think that that could have influenced the raises that we saw among younger people. MF But how big an influence do we think that? HC So in census 2021, we did see an increase among younger people being classified as disabled compared to 2011. And this did stand out particularly for females slightly more than males. We think there was also possibly a real change in population at that time down to the pandemic, with more people showing signs around depression and mental health problems, particularly at the period that the census was conducted. MF And there remains of course, underlying all this. This is census data. This is people's own assessment of their ability. How is that benchmarked perhaps against other sources? HC So it's obviously a different measure from other sources. Other data might be more medically based, so GP records, that kind of thing, which is more based on actual conditions as opposed to disability. MF And do we think that some people perhaps consider themselves disabled who might not be defined as disabled under other circumstances? HC Absolutely. I think disability means different things to different people and some people who might be regarded as disabled under the Equality Act specifically wouldn't want themselves to be looked at that way. And conversely, some people which may not be captured by that definition, may want themselves to be, so there are many different ways you can conceptualise and define disability. So this is one way to try and do that and to measure disability in a slightly more objective way. MF And being defined as disabled within that census definition that you've set out for us, how does that match against other criteria of disability, perhaps when it comes to gaining access to benefits or services? HC So it has a different definition and a different way of being assessed. So for instance, if somebody wanted to access benefits, then there's a completely different threshold and set of criteria that they would need to meet through Work and Pensions. MF There's a tension there isn't there, perhaps between people who answered in the affirmative on this on the Census but then wouldn't qualify as a disabled in the eyes of officialdom for want of a better word. HC Possibly, but we don't have that data within the ONS or around the DWP benefits data for this kind of use, to look at the match between our definition and the DWP assessment criteria. MF So you've shown us a complex picture there, tell us about the harmonisation work that's been going on across ONS to really develop and refine our understanding of disability as a concept. HC Yeah, so there's an ongoing programme of work, taking place to review the current harmonised standards and update them so that they can be more aligned with current conceptualization of disability impairments and conditions and try and ensure that they really relate to and reflect people's experiences. There's been a programme of research and engagement to find out the ways in which the standards are not currently performing, and what some of the key issues and gaps are, and that's due to be published in the end of March. And then the next step will be to outline in detail the plan over the coming year. So so far, the engagement activities have included speaking to data users, a variety of different organisations, government departments, charities, really including everyone across the spectrum, who are people who would use and engage with those harmonised standards to understand a bit more about the needs. And like I said, the kind of priorities and gaps and then the next step will be undertaking research to think about how best can we change and update those standards so that they, like I said, are really reflective and current. And one thing in particular that needs to be looked at being included is adding neurodiversity as a potential category. So at the moment that's not currently listed within the impairment categories. And so feedback has been that many people who are neurodiverse don't identify with the current kind of categorization and wording that's used. So that will be really important going forward. MF And that's also an important reflection of the constantly changing perception of what disability is in society. And from that the challenge of assessing and measuring it, Helen on the Census we've recently published our results as we've already mentioned in this discussion, but would you like to unpack those for us? We know that the number of disabled people went up since 2011. HC Yes, that's right. So the number of disabled people went up, but the actual overall proportion of disabled people fell in the population. And it's important to state that we standardise this data. And that's a statistical method which enables us to, to kind of compare like with like, so it accounts for the different population age structure between 2011 and 2021. So in 2021, we saw a slight fall in the proportion of disabled people in the population. So it's currently 18% in England falling from 19% in 2011. And in Wales, it's now 21% falling from 23% in 2011. MF And what were the drivers of that? That's a fascinating find. HC That's right. So some people might be slightly surprised by that, but it is a small decrease which we might expect to find in a population where people are living longer and healthier life expectancy is improving. And there may have been other influences such as the pandemic. So asking people how they feel about their health and disability during the pandemic may have affected how they responded as well. MF But how does the data break down by region, and by age and by gender? HC Say for gender, we saw that females were more likely to be disabled than males. And we had a particularly interesting finding around older people. So there was a big decrease among older people who've been disabled in 2021 Compared to 2011. And that was particularly true among those who were limited a lot by their disability. Obviously, we've talked about the question change where we removed a prompt, which then include problems related to old age, so that may have reduced the number of older people thinking of their conditions as a part of a disability. But we did see that that data was the same for the health question which preceded it as well. So we do think it's a real change in the population. And another aspect of that may have been due to Coronavirus. So we did very sadly see a lot of deaths among disabled people during COVID. But that wouldn't fully account for the changes that we've seen. So we think there's also an improvement in health of older people more generally as well. MF Oh, that's a reflection of the healthy life expectancy that we've discussed in other podcasts already, perhaps over and above the COVID factor that you mentioned. HC Yes, that's right. MF A greater prevalence of disability among younger people, and that was very much reflected, perhaps unsurprisingly, in deprived areas. HC Yes, that's right. So the change that we saw for younger people, again was stronger for females than for males. It was true for both genders, but females saw slightly higher proportions of disability than males. And that had increased particularly in the 20 to 24 age group, and the surrounding age groups to that, and that corresponds with some another analysis we've done where we found higher proportions of people with mental health problems, such as depression in those age groups. And we have the same outcome for health in general as well, where there is a correlation between that age group showing poorer health and more disability. MF So overall, is disability remaining fairly static from census to census? HC That's right. Well, we have seen the numbers of people have increased but the proportion as a population has stayed reasonably static. There are small falls, which does tally with the kind of improvements in health, but overall, it is showing the sorts of trends that we would expect, but we do see one in five people in the population as disabled, which is quite stark and does make us remember that we really need to think about how to improve the inequalities for this population. You mentioned just now about deprivation and deprivation among younger people, and that was an interesting finding we've had from the census data as well. It's not really a surprise to see that in deprived areas more people are likely to be disabled. But what we also found is that that occurs for younger age groups. So younger people in deprived areas are more likely to be disabled across all of the age groups than non-disabled people. MF That's the strength of the census of course, that you can get that really, really local picture of where disabled people are, as well as their overall numbers. HC Yes, and the index of Multiple Deprivation enables us to understand those areas that are more deprived or less deprived, so that we can look at those at a more aggregate level as well. MF Helen, thank you for taking us through the insight, fascinating insight, produced by the Census. But Shona, there is much more to the ONS' work on understanding disability. Could you set out some of that for us? SHONA HORTER Yeah, of course. And I can start by just giving some brief background, there was an independent group of experts who were convened, following the request of the national Statistician in 2020, to look at the inclusivity of data and evidence across the UK more broadly, and to make recommendations as to how we can make a step-change to really ensure that everyone counts and is counted within data and evidence and that programme of work identified disability as one key area that we really need to ensure that questions and concepts are accurately reflecting the experiences of individuals. They also identified the need for more qualitative approaches as part of this. So, we need that alongside our quantitative data. We also need to be really speaking to people and understanding their lived experiences MF Because statistics and numbers, and to really understand people's experience of disability, we need to hear from them directly. SH Exactly, exactly. And the qualitative can also help us to understand the how and the why beyond the numbers, so we can understand more about the lived reality of people's experiences, the barriers that people face in daily life and people's views as to what could help to improve things going forward. But also, we can understand where we might see patterns in the data, we can actually look at what is the social context beyond what's happening on the ground that might be shaping those experiences. So it's a really, really important thing that we include alongside our statistics. MF So what sort of patterns have we been seeing from the data? Helen? HC Similar in ONS we collect quite a range of data that encapsulates different disabled people across some of the different data sources that we collect. So, one of the main surveys that we do is the annual population survey which captures people across the UK. Every year we collect data from about 320,000 people. And the picture that we're having from that data is, unfortunately that disabled people tend to fare less well across the things that we measure, say for instance, they're less likely to be happy, they're less likely to see their life as worthwhile, life satisfaction is poor and they're likely to be more anxious than non-disabled people. And we've also seen from other surveys, like the Community in Life Survey that shows that disabled people are more likely to feel lonely. So these are all not positive outcomes. But some of the more positive ones that we have seen around education data, for instance, is showing that the proportion of disabled people with a degree has been steadily climbing since 2014. And the proportion of those who have no education has been steadily falling. It's not as in-line with non-disabled people. So disabled people are still less likely to have degrees than their non-disabled counterparts, but it's still a positive trend that we do see, but that does unfortunately, then feed into things like employment data, which we'll talk about more shortly, but with disabled people less likely to be employed. They're also less likely to own their own homes and more likely to live in social housing. And when we look at the Crime Survey for England and Wales, we also see that disabled people are more likely to experience things like antisocial behaviour and problems with nuisance neighbours than non-disabled people. So it's unfortunately not a positive picture when we look at the data more generally for disabled people. MF Nonetheless, that statistical picture fleshes out quite considerably the understanding we get from the census. So far, we've discussed a variety of different insights on the outcomes for disabled people, but we haven't looked at their experience in the workforce and how being disabled can come with additional costs. David, what are our data telling us about that experience in the workplace and the restrictions as well as the opportunities? DAVID AINSLIE So data from the Labour Force Survey shows in the last three months of 2020 to the latest data, and considering just working age adults, about half of disabled adults are in employment, so that's around 5 million disabled adults. So, this compares with about 8 in 10 when you consider non-disabled adults, the gap and rate between these two groups has decreased slightly over the last decade. In 2013, the earliest comparison we can make is that 4 in 10 disabled adults are employed compared with around three quarters of non-disabled adults. Some analysis from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests there's a range of factors that contribute to why this gap has decreased only slightly in the last decade, the largest factor probably being the overall disability prevalence itself has increased over the last decade. This tends to suggest that more people in work are becoming disabled than necessarily disabled people becoming employed. And there are other factors too, like overall changes in the size of the working population and general employment trends over the period. MF So this is more a question really, of people being able to hang on to their jobs despite having a limiting condition? DA So yes, to an extent, there are some quite stark findings in analysis of longitudinal data from the Labour Force Survey, and this has suggested that disabled workers tend to move out of being employed over an annual period at around twice the rate of non-disabled workers, to about 9% compared to 5%. By contrast, disabled people not in employment tend to move into being employed over a 12 month period at around a third of the rate of non-disabled people. So, 10% versus 27% here. MF So what's the evidence of the ability to work from home as encouraging more disabled people into the workforce? DA So the general trend of a slightly closing employment gap has actually stalled a bit since the start of the COVID pandemic. More research is definitely needed here to see what the impact of the pandemic has been as well as to look at if there's an impact of an increased ability to work from home. It's worth noting that the pattern of occupations that disabled people and non-disabled people tend to work in look a little different. So in the latest data, data again from the Labour Force Survey, working disabled people were less likely to be working in things like management in professional occupations than non-disabled people, but more likely than non-disabled people to be in occupations that might have been shut down during the pandemic or those where you might have had to work closely with people. So occupations such as in caring and leisure, or in sales and customer service, type occupations. This will of course have had some impact on people's ability to work from home. Lastly on this, of people who are in work at the moment, the latest data from our opinions and lifestyle survey, show it's actually a fairly similar proportion of disabled and non -disabled adults report working from home, hybrid working or indeed travelling to work. MF So not a fantastic picture perhaps for those with lifetime limiting conditions. But what did the data tell us about pay between disabled and non-disabled people Matt, what is the earnings gap? MATT MAYHEW So there's a similar sort of negative picture here as well. So the latest data we have on the annual population survey from 2021, showed that disabled employees on average were paid around 14% less than non-disabled employees. The gap appears to have widened slightly since 2014, whereas this was about 12%. If you tally this in pounds and pence terms using the latest data, the average pay was around £12.10 pence per hour with disabled adults, compared to about £14.03 per hour for non-disabled adults. MF And David, what evidence do we have about how different types of disability affects your chances of being in work and earning money? DAVID AINSLIE So the definition of disability of course covers a wide range of people impacted by a whole variety of physical and mental health conditions and to different extents. So the averages we've described cover a really broad group. But we've explored the Labour Force Survey data further, we've looked at both employment rates and pay by a variety of factors that are important to these things, such as the severity of disability, the number of and types of health conditions people report having, as well as some other things. But for example, in the latest data, the lowest employment rates were seen among those who reported they had severe or specific learning difficulties, autism or any mental health conditions with employment rates around about 25 to 30%. At the other end of the scale, disabled adults whose impairments were due to hearing, or skin conditions or allergies, had the highest employment rates, around 60 to 70%. MF And is this a similar picture with pay, Matt? MATT MAYHEW So when we look at pay, there's a similar sort of variation. So the largest pay gap is for disabled boys reporting autism as their main health condition, who have been paid an average of about a third less than non -disabled employees without any health conditions. Whereas the next largest pay gap is with those with depression with 18% less. By contrast, on the other side of the scale, for those reporting difficulties with seeing, there was actually no pay gap observed between the two groups. And in fact, we observed for those difficulties in hearing, were on average paid about 5% more than non-disabled employees. Severity of impairment is important too. So the pay gap between disabled people who are limited a lot in their day-to-day activities and non-disabled adults is about 20%, whereas those where their condition limits them a little, about 12%. Lastly, it's important to remember that when considering both pay and employment, that disabled and non-disabled people have patterns of other characteristics creating difference between them, such as age, sex, where they live, and the type of occupations they have, and they are quite often quite different. To look at this on the pay side we have modelled what the differences between the average pay of a disabled and non-disabled employee might look like, if the two groups have the same patterns or personal characteristics, similar ages, same sex distributions and job characteristics such as doing the same jobs, to see what effect that has. When we do this, the differences in the average pay between disabled and non-disabled employees are narrower but still persist between the two groups. MILES FLETCHER Shona, it's all very well to talk about a superimposed definition of disability, statistics tend to bring two issues, but our qualitative work has actually thrown up some fresh insights on what sort of characteristics make up disability? SHONA HORTER Yeah, and we've undertaken two quite large qualitative studies over the last year. One looking at the experiences of disabled adults accessing and engaging with activities, goods and services in the private sector and the other looking at the educational experiences of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. And through both those studies, we found a really a huge variation in people's experiences of disability or impairment. Many people have invisible impairments or conditions. People can have multiple impairments and comorbidities that can interact. So for example, physical conditions can be accompanied by mental health difficulties. And there can be a cyclical relationship that people describe as being catch-22. If you're struggling with your physical health, and that can exacerbate mental health, which can then cycle back into other challenges. So it's really important to understand that variety of experience and also how that can link to individuals' identity. So that can be a real process of adjusting to a diagnosis or to living with an impairment or condition and that can require adjusting one's own identity. And can also be different if you've recently acquired a condition or if you've had it for your whole life. And that's also linked to the social, so a lot of people spoke about anticipating judgement of others, being seen as different and the vulnerability that can come with that, and the anticipated stigma. So there are lots of reasons why people won't necessarily identify as disabled, or reasons why people may not identify with a specific condition, illness or impairment. And some young people also talked about diagnostic labels that they saw themselves as having such as dyslexia or autism. ADHD, that could help to explain their learning and support needs. But actually, many really didn't want to have labels that were used to justify any kind of different treatment, different opportunities and some rejected the label altogether. So it's really just understanding that nuance and the multifaceted nature of people's experiences and identity around this. MF And you made an interesting point there about disability that perhaps is invisible to others, unlike some forms of disability, which then people benefit from a recognition of that, but then others perhaps suffer from not having the disability recognised. SH Yeah, and that can be really complex. So we're working on a paper on that very topic at the moment that we're planning to publish soon, that actually that's another layer of, on the one hand, people describe being able to potentially hide having a condition or impairment that means that you might be able to avoid anticipated stigma, or discrimination or kind of negative reaction of the public but also, often people describe needing to disclose their condition or impairment in order to access the support that means they would be able to then access and engage with different areas of life so there can be quite a lot of vulnerability around that and that can also intersect with other characteristics. So people described the additional layers of vulnerability linked to gender linked to ethnicity that can form multiple, multiple layers of discrimination. MF And thereby we get to a much more useful understanding of, say a wider pattern of disadvantage generally. SH Yeah, and also really the need to understand me, what came through so clearly in both of these studies was the need to be flexible and to listen to and understand people's different needs. MF So this qualitative work is providing a much richer understanding of a wider pattern of disadvantage of which disability is but one factor. SH Yeah, and I think it really, these studies have both really highlighted the importance of having flexibility in listening to and understanding people's different needs. What we saw from both young people's perspectives and the perspectives of adults was really that just having that need for additional support. That means that you can fully and meaningfully participate in education and daily life in a range of different activities, goods and services. One of the particular difficulties I think, around invisible impairments that the findings presented was what people described as a need to prove their worthiness or prove their legitimacy of access to additional support needs. And that could bring an additional challenge, and also an additional level of stigma and vulnerability, that many people described facing backlash when, for example, having a lanyard or a badge that indicated the need for additional support. That there's that "disbelieveability" around that as well. So I think it was really emphasised through all our studies how important it is that there's increased awareness about people's different experiences and needs and that there's increased understanding and support for that put in place. MF And so the knowledge base continues to grow. The time of recording this, we're beginning to be able to step back and look at the pandemic period. What do we understand of that at the moment, in terms of its impact on disabled people at the time of the pandemic, and perhaps some of the lasting impacts and effects of it? SH Yeah, and I can comment briefly on the qualitative research there and Helen, it would be good to hear more about the quantitative findings on this. We found a really mixed picture in terms of experiences through the pandemic. So in some ways, the increased move to online services, groups, and education classes really opened up the world for people and could facilitate and support access and engagement and also could really support social contact. So many people described being able to join groups and networks that they hadn't previously been able to do as a result of, for example, physical access barriers. So that was really, really positive. But on the other hand, there was a real disadvantage for those who are digitally excluded. And we know that disabled people are disproportionately digitally excluded. Also in other ways the pandemic contributed to increased fear, increased isolation, so people talked about having increased social contact online, but that didn't necessarily replace the real in person activities and social contact. Some also found it quite difficult to engage and focus with online format. So particularly describing the cognitive demands that could be difficult for those with memory and learning, understanding or concentration impairments in particular, and real difficulties in accessing the required support. So SEN support was said to be quite slow to return to schools, and some children and young people with physical needs couldn't return to school safely without that support. So there was a kind of lasting impact there as well. MF And what's the future of the qualitative side of this work as well? Will that continue alongside the regular sources of overarching data? SH Yeah, I think it's important to continue to think about where we have gaps in our evidence and understanding and where there are questions that we can address qualitatively. And also considering having more mixed methods approaches. So where we can consider including qualitative components alongside our statistics to better understand some of these particular questions in more detail. So for example, one of the qualitative studies I've just mentioned was around the additional cost of disability. So, many people spoke about the additional financial costs like added premiums for insurance or for medical equipment compared to similar equipment that might be purchased by somebody who's not disabled, and we know that that's likely to become evermore difficult with the cost of living crisis. So whether that's an area that could warrant further exploration, I think it's just continuing to think about what are the key questions, evidence gaps and the needs for us to be addressing to ensure that we can inform policy and practice and make sure that our data is speaking to people's experiences and needs. MF Thank you, Shona. Helen, is there anything you'd like to add on that? HELEN COLVIN Yeah, absolutely. I think the work that Sona's team have been doing around qualitative research with disabled people is so valuable for helping to really illustrate the findings that we tend to get from the aggregated data that ONS has been more traditionally producing this. So where during the pandemic those qualitative interviews really showed and highlighted the day to day situations that disabled people were living with, because alongside that we also ran a survey on the opinion survey about disabled people's access to products and services and the data that we had from that very much supported the sort of experiences that people were reporting to Shona. So we found that disabled people had more difficulty accessing products and services during the pandemic than non- disabled people, and much of that appeared to be down to difficulties using transport, having places to rest and with practical things like crossing the roads, crossing footpaths, and moving around buildings, which were evident in some of the sort of lived experience quotes that Shona's team were picking up on as well. MF How to statisticians go about the whole question though of deciding whether it is disabilities that's the driver here, or whether there are other factors that ought to be considered first? HC Yeah, good question. So we know that in a lot of the outcomes that we look at disabled people tend to fare worse than non-disabled people. This isn't likely to be down to just being disabled per se. We think it's more likely that no single factor is going to explain the kind of outcomes that we see. It's more likely that there is a range of disadvantages experienced by disabled people which lead to this difference for non-disabled and disabled people. MF Overall then, an awful lot of work is being done, a wealth of data and understanding, where's this work going now? And how it can inform really effective interventions and policies and services to support disabled people? HC As we mentioned, we measure disability against the Equality Act, and that's really crucial for us to be able to understand how as a country we are performing in terms of monitoring and reducing inequalities for disabled people. The data that we collect and publish then feeds directly to policy makers. So one of our key stakeholders for my team is the Cabinet Office and working with their disability units. We make sure that they have the information they need to make policy but also thinking about local authorities monitoring that policy impact, monitoring the outcomes in their area and thinking about what they can do in terms of planning to support disabled people. But also our data is used widely by the third sector and lobbyists to hold government to account, to look at these inequalities and say, what's happening here? What are you doing about this and of course, it's really valuable for the citizen users and public interest to know what the situation is for disabled people in our population. MF Well, that is it for another episode of Statistically Speaking, thanks very much to all our guests for another fascinating discussion. For news about these podcasts, and the work of the Office for National Statistics, and to comment or ask us a question, please find us on Twitter at @ONSFocus. That's it from me Miles Fletcher. Our producer at the ONS is Julia Short. Thanks for listening, and until next time, goodbye. ENDS

With news headlines proclaiming the UK has 'narrowly avoided a recession', we decode the 'r' word and explain why this sometimes misleading term is one the ONS is often cautious to avoid. We get the lowdown on GDP (Gross Domestic Product); discuss whether its time as the yardstick for measuring the success or failure of the world's economies is coming to an end; and hear how the ONS is already looking well 'Beyond GDP' and introducing broader measures of social wellbeing and the environment to provide us with a more holistic view of how society is faring. Joining Miles is ONS Director of Economic Statistics, Darren Morgan, Chief Economist, Grant Fitzner; and Director of Public Policy Analysis, Liz McKeown. Links Latest GDP data Measures of National Well-being Beyond GDP Transcript MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to Statistically Speaking the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher, and this time, we're going to talk about a very famous and long running statistic that's still regarded as the single most important economic indicator of them all. I'm talking of course about GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the expansion or contraction of which is the yardstick against which the success or failure of the world's economies is measured. It's been around a long time, since around the time of the Second World War, in fact, but is its pre-eminence now coming to an end? GDP misses some things out - that which matters, as was once memorably claimed. So we'll be talking about how the ONS has been updating GDP to keep it relevant and developing new complementary measures of economic and social wellbeing that could perhaps, in future, supplant GDP itself. And in the current economic climate, we cannot avoid the "R" word. What exactly is a recession? How much does it actually matter, if it's only a technical one? Is it the difference between economic disaster and salvation? Spoiler alert, it really isn't. Anyway, we have a panel of top ONS folk to explain it all: Darren Morgan is director of economic statistics production and analysis, Grant Fitzner is Chief Economist and director of macro-economic statistics and analysis, and also with us is Liz McKeown, Director of Public Policy Analysis, who is leading the drive towards these broader measures on social and economic welfare. Welcome, everyone. Darren to start with you. You are responsible for the production of the UK's GDP estimates. So let's start by reminding ourselves what precisely it measures, it's basically seeking to put a value on all economic activity over a given period. DARREN MORGAN Yeah, so we look at GDP and we measure the economy in three different ways. First of all, we do it via what you call the output approach, and most simply, that's everything that's produced in the economy, and that can be cars rolling off the production line, that can be a lawyer providing advice as a service, and it can be public services as well. So surgeries, GP appointments and so on. So everything we produce in the economy. We also look at measuring the economy, everything that is spent, so that could be you and I in household, spending money in the shops or on leisure activities. It can be businesses spending money on goods and services. And it can also mean the government spending money, so everything we spend as well. And the third way we measure GDP is the income approach, which is basically everything that's earned in the economy. So for us in terms of households that's wages and salaries, for businesses it's profit, for example. So we measure everything we produce, everything we spend and everything we earn, and in principle, they should all add up. MF And you're boiling it down then, a vast amount of data flowing into the ONS, boiling it all down to one single indicator. DM We do, and we do that by approaching thousands and thousands of businesses asking them about their performance. We speak to thousands of households about their behaviour. And we also use a lot of data already available withing government, so what we call administrative data - data that already exists. And we bring all those different data sources into the building, we look at it and we confront it, and we come up with ultimately, as you suggest, a single number on the growth of the economy. MF What's changed in the in the collection of data now? How timely a process is this? DM So in the UK, we've got one of the timeliest measures of the economy in the world. And we only have one of two countries who produce a monthly measure the economy, so we do it much more quickly, and obviously it is completely different to how we did it say, even 10 or 15 years ago. We collect most of our data now from businesses online. Whereas previously we used to send a questionnaire to them, used to write the questionnaire and they would send it back to us, and that could take a week or weeks to do that. Businesses can fill the form in now sat at their desk online, do it very quickly and it reaches us straightaway. MF And you mentioned administrative data as well. So that's coming from other parts of government. What are the main sources there? How is that gathered? DM So that's correct. So what we try to do is minimise the burden on businesses and households, so some businesses may have to complete a tax return to HMRC for example. So we are able to use that information and bring it in, so that's one example. Pay As You Earn, people who use pay as you earn systems, will be well aware that we use that in our labour market numbers. But we use lots of different sources that are already available across government, and we reuse them for statistical purposes, like I said, to provide better estimates, because that data tends to be very good, but also to minimise the burden, as I said on households and businesses at the same time. MF And what is the coverage, in terms of what's included, how has that evolved in recent years? DM So in a way, in terms of what we call the boundary, the economic boundary, that has actually stayed very similar over a long period of time. It is very traditional in terms of the boundary we measure. So, like I said, it's sort of business activities, household activity and government activity. But it is along those lines about how much is produced, how much is spent, how much is earned, but the boundary for the economy has been very similar for 50 years. MF Nevertheless, there are some things included in GDP which might surprise some people. For example, in the most recent GDP release we talked about the fall in the number of pupils in classrooms in the last quarter of 2022. DM The public services was actually a really key indicator for the number that we published for December, and we saw a fall in the number of GP appointments, a fall in the number of operations, less vaccinations being given because the autumn booster campaign tailed off. And we also saw lower attendance in schools, because in the lead up to Christmas not so many pupils will go into school as we normally see. And the reason why we measure that, as you can imagine we measure teacher salaries, doctor salaries, we measure how much is invested in the health service, how much is invested in schools, and obviously those schools and hospitals buy goods and services. So, it's a really important part of the economy. So of course we measure the goods and services that they produce as well. It's a really important part of the economic measurement for GDP. MF And I think I'm going to use it to motivate my children in the mornings as well. When they go off to school I'll be reminding them of their contribution to our economic performance. DM They certainly are. So it's a really good way to get them through the school day, Miles. MF But there's a serious point underlying this, and there's a bit of a propaganda point for the ONS here as well, as it because we are actually taking real measurements of public sector activity, and it's been said that some countries just make broad assumptions about that activity. What do we do that other countries don't? DM You're absolutely right, Miles. And that became most marked during the lockdowns during, the COVID pandemic. So we measured, if I can give schools and education as an example, we actually measured how much education was being provided to pupils during a lockdown, whether that was face-to-face in schools, or whether it was remote learning, or whether unfortunately, in some cases, there was no learning at all. We measured that directly, whereas perhaps some other countries basically measured the number of pupils. So as you can imagine, the number of pupils is the same whether they are getting taught or not. So in the pandemic we showed a sharp fall in education during some of the lock downs, but we've seen a faster recovery in the years that followed. Whereas if you look at other countries, their measurement of education has been far more stable over the most recent years because the numbers of pupils doesn't really change. MF They are pretending that the schools were open, when in fact, they weren't. Anyway, that's just part of this enormous data gathering operation, bringing in all this data, and it takes around about six weeks to produce the preliminary estimate, which you say is among the quickest of the estimates, but of course that's only part of the story, isn't it? DM That's pretty quick, six weeks, but we do produce an estimate for all three measures, we produce a measurement how much is produced, how much is spent, and how much is earned at that point in time. So we do that, but obviously, we only have so much data at that point. You know, we have quite a lot of data to actually because those surveys are very timely, but not everything. MF As a percentage, it's about 40% isn't it? DM That's correct. But obviously our data collection doesn't stop at that point. We continue to bring new data in. And that's why we publish the latest estimate, which covers more detail, more granularity, different parts of the economy. And that additional data that's brought in allows us to do that at a later stage. MF You have a couple more months to produce that one, and that's based on pretty much all of the data we're going to get. DM Yeah, it's over 90% of that stage, it's about 90%. So yes, we have between the first estimate and the second estimate, we do get a lot more data in. MF And therein lies, what some people might say is one of the weaknesses of GDP, and particularly when making quick assumptions about the economy. There's a trade-off here isn't there, about wanting to know broadly where the economy is going, and making really, really hard and fast assumptions about what's happening. And therein lies the whole issue of revisions, revising GDP. Now, it's important for everyone to understand that when the ONS revises GDP, it's not correcting its mistakes is it. DM What you're describing there Miles is a classic tension in statistical production. So we could say to everybody, our users, no, we're not going to publish anything until we get all that data, all that 90% of data. But to do that, you're going to have to wait about 80 days. Or what we could do is drag an earlier estimate based on less data, but still not a really good estimate, but you could have that 40 days quicker, 50 days quicker. So you know, there's that tension between timeliness and quality. And I think the way we do it, I think it's brilliant. We published two estimates initially, and that's for the quarter. The one that's a bit quicker based on less data, and the one later based on more data content. But what we do to help our users is we have a really detailed revisions analysis between those estimates, so people can look and judge typically, how often and how much is that data revised when we publish. So they have the full information in front of them to make judgments if they have to. And I think we strike the right balance taking that approach. MF What is the ONS' track record in doing this? Because have there been occasions perhaps, as has been suggested, sometimes that the early data can be misleading, and in fact, the economy might be heading in the opposite direction. DM So if you're looking at revisions analysis, it's pretty good, you know, within the first estimate, and that second estimate, and so revisions are typically very small, and importantly, unbiased, they're equally likely to be a revision up or a revision down, and that's really, really important. I think when a real spotlight is shone on revisions, that's when the economy is around zero, you know if you have a 0.1 revision, which is a small revision if your economy is going along at 0.8, 0.7%. You know, whether it's 0.7, 0.6 and so on, people go 'Ah, so what?'. But if the economy is going around zero, or 0.1 or –0.1, that 0.1 revision can change the sign, and people get very excited about that. But actually, it's a 0.1 revision, and that's when the spotlight is really, like I said, is shone on the revisions performance MF As it was in our most recent estimate of quarterly GDP, the final quarter of 2022 when there was a big fat zero in terms of growth. Now, that led to headlines in some very respectable media organisations that went "UK narrowly avoided recession". Well, did we? DM So we did technically yes, we did. Absolutely. Because it wasn't negative. That was our Q3 estimate of the economy was for a four, so if Q4 fell for economic growth, a technical recession, which is widely recognised as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Yes, we would have been in a technical recession. But I think you've just highlighted how it makes sense to look more broadly at the economy because whether it was 0, or –0.1, 0.1, how different really was the economy at that point in time? I would say the economy was broadly flat. MF Because if you're beholden to this idea of a technical recession, a couple of months down the line we might say hang on, our better estimate based on 95% of the data says actually it was just slightly down, and therefore the headline writers say, "Oh, we were in recession after all." DM Exactly. I think that just highlights, again, being sensible in terms of how you look at the economy overall, because really the economy, if it's a 0.1 revision ,if that's what happens in it in a few weeks time, is the economy fundamentally different to what it is at that moment? I would suggest not, but you're right, I would imagine that it would get splashed that the UK is now in recession, and coverage will be significant because of that. MF And it's fair to say that in the past these technical recessions, there was a double-dip recession wasn't there about 10 years ago, that made a lot of headlines at the time. It's not in the figures anymore. DM No, it's not. It's been revised and that period of our economic history when we were around that flat period for the economy. So the revisions have been relatively small in that period, but you're right, we were in recession and because we had revisions from later data, we no longer were. And as you suggested people got very excited about that. But really, Miles, the economy was in exactly the same position as it was in our first estimate. MF So a strong message there listeners, when you hear people talk about a technical recession, bear in mind, that may not be what it sounds like. In fact, it probably almost certainly isn't. DM Good advice, Miles. MF Grant, to bring you in on this then, from an economist's perspective, it's fair to say then that in fact, there's no definition of a recession that's really official or formally accepted anywhere. It's certainly not something that the ONS talks about. GRANT FITZNER No, I mean, ultimately, it's a matter of judgement. And of course, economists spend a lot of time arguing about these things. In fact, it was so bad in the US that academic economists, as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research set up a committee to discuss and agree on when business cycles were, well when recessions started and when they ended, so that when they were comparing their research they were all working off a common framework. Now, that sounds great, but the problem of course is with this being academics, they looked at a wide range of data, and they typically took several years after a recession had occurred before they would put definitive data out of it. Now, that's fine if you're publishing economic history, but if you're a journalist or indeed if you're working at the Office for National Statistics and you want to have an idea of what's going on now, you need something that's a bit closer to real time, and that does, as Darren said, involve a degree of judgement. But I think it's fair to say that the common sense understanding of a recession is a prolonged and significant downturn in economic activity. So not just one or two quarters, and not just a 0.1, but actually something a bit more substantial, as indeed we've seen in the 70s and the 80s, and of course, in the global financial crisis that kicked off in 2008. So they typically last for a while, and they do have quite a significant impact on the economy, households and business. MF In fact, that's a lot more serious isn't it, than the definition that's used as a sort of working rule of thumb, which is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. In fact the origins of that are very murky, really, nobody actually seems to know precisely where it came from. One of President Nixon's speech writers seems to be the main suspect. GF Well, possibly, but it has been more widely used. I think journalists need something quick and simple to understand, and I guess this meets the bill. But imagine if you had a –0.1 in one quarter and then a –0.1 in the next, and then they were subsequently revised away, I don't think anyone would seriously call that a recession. And just the point about the length as well, if you look at the 70s, 80s, or 90s, recessions typically last about three years. That's how long it took for the level of economic activity to get back to the pre-recession levels, and indeed for the global financial crisis that kicked off in 2008, it took four and a half years before growth was back at pre-recession levels, so an incredibly long time. And I think just looking at the pandemic and the impact that that had in 2020, it's a very different set of events. We had two negative quarters and then the economy started to recover after of course, a very large fall. Now that's unusual. And of course that was because of this shock of the pandemic and lockdowns. Whereas typically, these things take quite a bit longer to kind of work their way through the system. MF And if you look at the path of GDP on the time-series graphic on the ONS website, it really goes off a ski slope doesn't it, really quite dramatically as the pandemic starts and then kind of sharply recovers, and then it's kind of clawing its way back now. GF That's right. And so things are often slower than we may be used to in recent years. And to give you an example of that, at the moment, we have the Bank of England raising rates quite aggressively so interest rates have gone up, mortgages have gone up, businesses are facing higher costs of borrowing, but the labour market still looks pretty robust. Now historically, if you look at past recessions, there's always a bit of a lag between, for example, central bank tightening or some sort of supply shock and for that to work its way through in terms of employment, business, profitability, and so forth. So these things often take longer than people expect. Now, I'm not saying of course, that that means we're in a prolonged economic downturn. I mean forecasters differ as to how severe and how long the current period of economic weakness is likely to be and indeed, people disagree on whether we may even enter recession this year. It's that close. MF But we'll know if we're in a significant downturn, a genuine recession or whatever label we want to apply, when it happens, but at the moment we seem to be in sort of somewhere in between. Disappointing though that might be for headline writers. GF And the sort of things that you would typically look at would be more businesses going out of business, so business liquidations, weak retail spending, which of course we have seen, driven by the big increase in the cost of living over the past six months, and significant increases in the level of unemployment. Those are three of the things that you would typically look at. Possibly also weaker industrial production is often associated with recessions as well. MF So does that suggest then, talking about the action being in those other indicators, does that period for the economy, perhaps an economy on the cusp of growth and contraction, does that highlight one of the major limitations of GDP as a measure? How seriously do economists regard it now? Does it remain that big, totemic bellwether of economic success or failure? GF Well it is a broad and pretty comprehensive measure, so it does include income, expenditure and output. So a lot of what you would typically consider economic activity, but of course it doesn't cover everything. It doesn't cover anything produced in households, at the moment it doesn't properly capture what's going on in the natural environment. So it's certainly not broad enough to cover every kind of activity that produces something of value. And it typically focuses on things that can be measured or quantified, or have a value ascribed to them. So the market sector is the largest part of the economy that we measure through gross domestic product, because there's also the non-market sector, public sector charities, etc. They are a bit harder to measure. One of the interesting differences between the UK approach and some other countries is that we spent quite a bit of time trying to measure not just how much we spend on health and education, but as Darren said, what actual activity, what outputs, are we getting from that investment? MF Yeah, I mentioned at the top of the podcast, there's this famous quote from Robert Kennedy, of course, famously US Attorney General and then presidential candidate. He actually said the problem with GDP is it does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It doesn't include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of public officials, etcetera, etcetera. It seems to me that the demand then for more holistic measures of well-being or progress, in fact goes well beyond economics, but is there more that economics can contribute? And what is the ONS doing towards that? GF Yes, there is more that we can do. And indeed, we have been doing that. So we've created a series of what we call satellite accounts, which measure either different parts of the economy or activity, or indeed measure things that are currently outside of what we call the national accounts. So for example, we've been publishing at the ONS for quite some time now an annual series of natural capital accounts, which tried to convey you what's been produced out there in the environment. Clean air, for example, is an output of trees and vegetation and parks. We try and put estimates around those. Now, of course, there's some challenging methodological issues about how you measure some of these things, but I think we've had quite some success in actually putting some values around those. And at the international level, the current system of national accounts was devised back in 2010, there's quite a lively, if indeed statisticians can have a lively debate, around what the next system of national accounts will look like, which is due to come in 2025. And one of those very issues is do we start to bring the environment more into those measurements. MF So not quite the beauty of our poetry but certainly the landscape, the value of our environment. GF Exactly. And I suppose the other misconception about GDP is people often see it as a measure of well-being. It was never really designed to play that role. It's a measure of economic activity. Now, of course, there's a clear link between economic activity, prosperity, and well-being, but they're not the same concept. MF So in order to be more inclusive, and to fully reflect activity in its broadest sense, we're having to go much further than that. And a bold initiative in that direction, started more than a decade ago now, was the national well-being programme launched by the then Prime Minister David Cameron. Liz McKeown, the National well-being programme was, it was not taken wholly seriously. I recall at the time it was dubbed as Cameron's Happiness Index, and the idea that we could dump GDP and inflation and so forth was taken with some mirth. Ten years on, how far have we come to developing alternative measures like that, and how seriously have they been taken? LIZ MCKEOWN I think we've come a long way, but perhaps it's worth us looking back to those days of 2010 and what we did then, we wanted to know what matters most to people. And we went out and asked them and we had over 34,000 responses to that debate. And that allowed us to start measuring well-being for the first time as a national statistical Institute, that debate, understanding what really mattered to the public, getting those responses allowed us to develop 10 domains of well-being. These are the things that people were saying really mattered to how they felt as individuals, as a community, and you know, ultimately as a nation. And the domains that we developed there were personal well-being, they were our relationships, our health, what we do, where we live, our personal finances, our education and skills, the economy, governance, and the environment. And under those 10 domains, we developed a number of measures, both objective and subjective, which allowed us to begin to get to that question of how are we doing as the UK in a more holistic way than economic measures can do alone. MF And what story has that told over the years? How were we doing? How are we doing? LM I think it opens a new lens and allows us to think about that quite differently. Perhaps I could take an example of how we thought about well-being during the pandemic, there we were wanting to understand what's the impact of lockdowns more broadly, and we could use wellbeing measures to help us understand that. We could see how personal well-being and levels of loneliness were, you know, really negatively impacted during the lockdown, and then we could see the improvements as we came out of them. We could see how that differed by how men and women were doing. We saw during the pandemic women's well-being falling below men's for the first time, and so we could understand a different dimension of how society was reacting to one of the big issues of our time. MF And when we ask people how happy they are, they tend to give quite a positive response, don't they? LM Well, I think it's important to say that wellbeing goes beyond just asking people how happy they are. So personal well-being does look at people's happiness, it looks at their levels of anxiety, and it looks at how satisfied they are with their life and how worthwhile they think the things in their life are. But the broader concept of wellbeing is understanding how people are doing across these domains that I mentioned earlier. MF Now this isn't just suddenly what's been going on in the UK, there's something of a global movement to broaden out our approach to measuring not just personal well-being, but economic well-being as well. And an important part of that is the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. And put quite simply, it's a global initiative to find out if the world is becoming a better place, and to set targets and then policies from that. LM Yeah, absolutely Miles. And I think it reflects doesn't it that people do want to understand progress in that multi-dimensional way. They want to understand not just how we're doing economically, but actually what the impact on our environment is, what the impact on our society is. And those indicator-based approaches, be they the well-being measures that we've developed here in the UK, be they the Sustainable Development Goals, they're allowing us to take that broader check on progress or sort of multi-dimensional check on progress and allows us to see things that we couldn't see if we were only looking at the core economic statistics that you were discussing with colleagues earlier. MF Now on GDP day when the ONS produces its quarterly estimates of economic performance in that traditional sense that we talked about with Darren, there are two important publications that do get slightly overlooked on the day but are well worth highlighting now. And the first of those is one entitled quality of life in the UK. Sounds intriguing. Tell us about that. LM These two publications we added to the mix on GDP day last year, and why did we do that? I think it really wanted to reflect how important it is that we look at progress in that multi-dimensional way that I was talking about earlier. That we give people the chance to see not just what the latest economic data is telling us, but we are also looking at how life is going for people in the UK, and that's where the quality of life in the UK publication comes in. MF Break down the elements for that if you would, tell us what sort of narrative it's providing at the moment about our quality of life. LM Yeah, so this is a publication that every quarter looks across those 10 domains of national well-being, personal well-being, relationships, health what we do where we live personal finance, economy, education skills governance in the environment. It looks at the measures we have under those domains and says well, what news have we got from the last quarter. And I won't go through all that here, I encourage you to go and have a read of it, it makes interesting reading. But for example, on the personal well-being side, we have seen in the last quarter a drop in the percentage of adults who've seen very high levels of life satisfaction and happiness. There's been a decrease in that. So that's one to watch, and one to keep an eye out for. But the publication goes across the 10 domains and yeah, as I said Miles, well worth a read MF An interesting alternative view as well at a time when the classic economic data was showing a big zero reading. In fact, there's another aspect in which an awful lot is going on, and obviously a downward trend there in some respects, at least. LM Absolutely. And users are telling us that they want to understand what's going on across the country in a more holistic sense and understand a bit more about our societal measures, but also about our environmental measures. And I guess that sort of takes us on to the other publication that we put out on GDP day on climate change insights. And if you take all those three publications as a whole, so the quarterly GDP figures, the quality of life in the UK and the climate change insights publication, you're basically allowing the public policymakers to look and understand, okay, what's the latest developments in the economy? What's the latest developments in society and people's well-being and what's the latest environmental developments? And it's allowing us to begin to answer that question, how is the UK doing in a much more holistic way than we've been able to before. MF So I guess what I'm taking away from this lightning tour of a fascinating and extremely diverse environment, is that when you see headlines saying the economy is neither growing nor contracting, there's a much, much bigger story out there and there's a much bigger story to be learned by looking at the ONS data. LM That's exactly right. And we're not standing still either as an office as well. We want to make sure that what we're measuring is still what matters most to people. As I said, that's how we started the well-being programme in the first place by going out to the nation and asking them what matters most. That was over a decade ago, and obviously, a lot has changed over the last 10 years. So it felt like a good time to take that step back and think, are we still measuring the best things to measure in our well-being programme, and the National Statistician kicked off a review of those measures back in October. So we're working through that at the moment and in the spring we'll be presenting some recommendations for how we can do this even better in the future. MF And where do you think is going to lead? Do you think GDP might be toppled off its perch and we'll be able to produce one big comprehensive indicator that would bring in all that economic activity as well? Is that Is that where we're headed? LM I think GDP will always be an influential statistic. As a measure of the productive economy there are huge strengths to it. And strengths are continuing to increase as it becomes, as I think Darren mentioned earlier, more timely, better quality. So GDP is important and will remain important for ONS. But we also know that looking at progress more broadly than GDP is more important than ever to members of the public who want to understand how we're doing, but also to policymakers who are looking at future policies and providing statistics and insights that help both the public and policymakers to make the best possible decisions. That is what we are, as a national statistical institute all, about. So GDP, important, but actually having a full range of data and statistics and insights that go beyond that. That's where the future is. MF Darren, as the person responsible for producing GDP, that's a challenge for the future then? DARREN MORGAN That's right and I think Liz summed it up really well. I think GDP is important, but it's not everything. MF Well thanks very much to all our guests for a fascinating discussion there, and we'll put links to some of the ONS publications we discussed in the programme notes for further reading. I'm Miles Fletcher. And thanks for listening to Statistically Speaking. You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and all the other major podcast platforms. With thanks to our producer Steve Milne, it's time to say, until next time, goodbye.

Miles explores how data linking can help tackle cross-cutting issues in an increasingly uncertain world, and how the ONS' new Integrated Data Service will provide a step-change transformation in how researchers will be able to access public data. Joining him are ONS colleagues Bill South, Deputy Director of Research Services and Data Access; Jason Yaxley, Director of the Integrated Data Programme; and award-winning researcher Dr Becky Arnold, from the University of Keele. TRANSCRIPT MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to Statistically Speaking - the Office for National Statistics Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher and in this episode, we're going to step back from the big news making numbers and take a detailed look at an aspect of the ONS which is, less well known, but arguably just as important. The ONS gather an awful lot of data of course, and much of it remains valuable long after it's been turned into published statistics. It is used by analysts and government, universities and the wider research community. So we're going to explain how that's done and look at some really interesting and valuable examples of how successful that has been to date. And we're also going to hear about a step-change transformation that's now underway in how public data is made available to researchers, and the future potential of that really important, exciting process. Our guides through this subject are Jason Yaxley, Director of the ONS's integrated data programme, Bill South who is Deputy Director of the Research Services and Data Access Division here at the ONS, and later in the podcast we'll hear from Dr. Becky Arnold who is an award-winning researcher from Keele University. Right Bill, set the scene for us to start with then, we are talking here about the ONS Secure Research Service, take it from the top please. What is it? What's it all about? What does it do? What do we get from it? BILL SOUTH Hi Miles, thank you. Yes, the Secure Research Service, or the SRS, is the ONS' trusted research environment. We've been running now for about 15 years, and we provide secure access to unpublished de-identified micro data for research that's in the public good. So in terms of numbers, we hold over 130 datasets, we've got about 5000 Researchers accredited to use the service and about 1500 of those would be working in the system at any given time on about 600 live projects. MF So what sort of data, what is stored and what's made available? Is this survey responses? BS Traditionally the SRS has held most of our ONS surveys. So that's the labour market, business...all of our surveys really. In the last four years, thanks to funding we've received from Administrative Data Research UK (ADRUK), we've been able to grow the amount of data we hold, so now we've increasingly got data coming from other government departments. And we've got more linked datasets that enable us to offer new insights into the data. MF And so these are people's responses to survey questions and people's records, as well as data that are held by other departments? BS Indeed, yes, the data coming from other departments is often administrative data, so not from surveys but more admin data. MF And a lot of the value in that is in being able to compare and to link this data to achieve different research insights? BS Absolutely. I mean, a good example of that is a dataset that's been added in the last year or so where our ONS census data from 2011 was linked to educational attainment data from the Department for Education into a research dataset called Growing up in England (GUiE). And it's hugely important because we have a lot of rich information from the census but you know, linking that with the educational attainment data offers new insights about how kids do at school, and how they're linked to the characteristics of their background. MF So you use the underpinning of census to provide a really universal picture of what's going on across that particular population, and therefore gain some insight into how people have achieved educationally in a way that we wouldn't have done before. Of course, all this and the power of it is clear in that example, but a lot of people might think, oh my gosh, they must know an awful lot about me that in that case, tell us about how privacy and anonymity are protected in those circumstances. BS Yeah, absolutely. It's a central part of their operation, and clearly the word secure in the name is key there. So we follow a five safes principle which underpins everything we do. The five safes are safe people, so that anyone who uses the SRS has to be trained and go through an assessment to be accredited by us to use the environment. Once they're accredited, they then have to apply to have a project that's running in the system, and that gets independently assessed. There are a number of checks around whether it's ethically sound, whether the use of data is appropriate, but the key thing really is around the public good. So all research projects that happen in the SRS have to be in the public good and there's a commitment to be transparent. So every project that happens in the SRS, there's a record which is published on the UK Statistics Authority website. The third safe is around the settings, so it's a very controlled environment where people access the data. The fourth stage is around the data, so although we've said it's record level data it's already identified. Names and addresses, any identifiers are stripped out of the data before researchers can access it. And the final stage, the final part of the of the researcher journey if you like, is around outputs. What that means is we do checks to ensure that when any analysis leaves the environment that no individual or business can be identified for the published results. MF So in essence, you must convince the ONS that you are a Bonafide researcher, and you also have to convince them that what you're doing is definitely for the public benefit. BS That's right. And the other thing that's worth noting is that the SRS, like a number of other trusted research environments across the country, has been accredited under the Digital Economy Act to be a data processor, which means we go through a rigorous assessment process around the security, the environment, but also our capability to run it. So that's our processes, our procedures, whether our staff are adequately trained to run the service. That's a key part of that accreditation under the Digital Economy Act. MF So, on that point then about anonymity, you can drill right down to individual level, but you'll never know who those individuals actually are or be able to identify them? BS That's right. Researchers typically will run their code against the record level data, but when they've got the results of the analysis, there are clear rules that say you won't be allowed to take out very low counts. So that means like our published outputs, there's no way of identifying anyone once the research is published. MF And the SRS has built up over the years a good reputation for actually doing this effectively and efficiently. BS Yes, I think that's fair to say. We have a good reputation, and the service is growing in terms of the number of datasets and the number of projects and the number of people using it. So, I think that speaks for itself. MF Okay, let's pull out another I think powerful example of why this facility is so important and that comes from the recent COVID pandemic. Many listeners will be aware that the ONS ran a very, very large survey involving upwards of 100,000 people providing samples, taking COVID tests, and they were sent off to be analysed creating an awful lot of community level data about COVID infections, and we in the ONS then publish our estimates and continue to do so as we record estimates every week of fluctuating infection levels. But behind all that work, there were expert researchers in institutions around the country who were doing far more with that data. And the SRS was fundamental to delivering the data to them. Tell us about how that operated Bill, and some of the results that we got out of it. BS Yeah, sure. I mean, the COVID infection survey that you refer to there, that dataset is available for accredited researchers to apply to use, and they have done, but we've also brought in a number of others, about 20 COVID related datasets are in the SRS, so things around vaccination or the schools infection survey, mortality, etc. So since the start of the pandemic we've had over 50 projects that have either taken place and completed, or are currently underway, in the environment. Some of those are directly using the COVID related dataset. So looking, if you like, at the health impact, but there's also projects that are are looking at, if you like, non COVID data, economic data or education data, that are projects dedicated to understanding the impact of COVID. MF What sort of insights have we seen from those? BS In terms of those using the COVID related data there's been analysis to highlight the disproportionate impact of the virus on ethnic minorities, that went on to implement a number of government interventions. Another project assessed the role of schools in the in the Coronavirus transmission. We had another project that was run specifically on behalf of local authorities to inform their response to the pandemic that offered insights into the risks between occupation. Also research into footfall in retail centres and how business sectors were affected by the pandemic. So a really huge range of things. There were other research projects looking at the impact and you know, an example there was a project that looked at learning loss. So, kids not being in school for that sort of 20 to 21 academic year. Similarly, the Bank of England ran a project looking at the financial stability of the UK during the pandemic period. So hopefully those examples give you this sense of the range. MF An incredibly impressive array of projects, all underpinned by that big survey, the likes of which the ONS has a unique ability to run, that big survey taking part run across the United Kingdom of people providing and answering questionnaires as well as providing survey samples. And don't take our word for it, I mean, it was reported in the Daily Mirror no less. A researcher who benefited from that data described the COVID Infection Survey as, when it came to the pandemic, one of the most valuable resources on the planet. So that's a powerful example of the research value that can be extracted through the secondary uses of data gathered by the ONS. Anyway, enough of blowing our own trumpet, the service has been running a very successful award scheme that recognises the achievements of external researchers Bill. Tell us about some of the projects that have been recognised in that. BS It's worth mentioning I think also that we've got case studies on our website, the Secure Research Service website and the ADRUK website, which show in a little bit more detail the impact some of these research projects have had, but like you say, we also hold an annual Research Excellence Awards, which is great. We have different categories of awards where people can submit their project and explain where their research has been published and had an impact. And like I said, we get a lot of nominations and reviewing the applications, which I did last year, it really emphasises the breadth and quality of the research taking place in the SRS. MF Check those out then if you're interested in learning more about those projects, some of the examples that Bill mentions and winners of the Research Excellence Awards, of course, one of whom I'm very pleased to say joins us now and that's Dr. Becky Arnold from the University of Keele, who took home the cross-government analysis award for her team's work on controlling the spread of COVID-19 in vulnerable settings in a project undertaken at the UK health security agency. Becky I guess that's but another example of the kind of secondary uses of the COVID infection data. Welcome to the podcast. Please tell us all about that. Dr. Becky Arnold Yeah, very, very glad to. So first thing I want to talk about essentially is what a vulnerable setting is. And that was really key to the sort of cross governmental aspects of this because vulnerable settings are settings like care homes, hospitals, prisons, schools, where you have a lot of quite often vulnerable people in a really dense environment where COVID can sort of spread and get out of control really quickly. And if we want to define a testing policy for that, so our testing policy being perhaps everybody takes like three LFT tests a week, or maybe one monthly PCR test, but also other factors, like what's your isolation policy? So, if somebody is infected with COVID, how many days do they have to be isolated for? Do they need a negative test to be released? What is your outbreak policy in these institutions, if you know that there's an outbreak going on? It's this really, really complicated thing. And you know, for government policy, you need a testing regime to try and keep COVID under control in these settings. But there's a few difficulties with that. The first thing is that the settings are all really different. So, when I just mentioned about the cross governmental thing, it meant interacting with lots of different departments, lots of different data sources to try and understand these particular settings and their particular characteristics. The really, really critical point I want to make is that the whole project was about trying to understand what that testing policy should be. And the best testing policy in one setting may not be the best testing policy in another setting, because when we're trying to give advice to policymakers and policy departments about what testing strategy you should use in an institution, you don't want to just pull that out of the hat. You don't want to just go oh, I think this many LFT tests a week. We want to give data-driven, informed, evidence-based advice. So essentially, what this project was looking at was all of these different settings in a lot of detail, looking at the demographics within them and their particular vulnerabilities. So, care home residents are particularly vulnerable, as are people in prison. They're more clinically vulnerable than people of the same age that are not in prison and a bunch of different aspects, how people interact in these different settings, how infection spreads in these different settings. And from that, essentially, we created a model where you can simulate the spread of COVID in these different settings under different testing strategies. So, you can answer questions like if we use 'x' testing strategy versus 'y' testing strategy, what is the likely impact going to be on the number of people that died, the number of people that need hospitalisation, how many of those people that go to hospital are going to need intensive care, which often comes with long recovery and sometimes permanent impacts on people's lives. So, there are huge things to consider. And it's actually the point of this project was to study these environments and try and make something which can provide that evidence to inform decision making. MF This was data being gathered, presumably then in institutional settings up and down the country and then being collected centrally and made available to you at a single point of contact? BA It would have been very nice if that was the case. Because we're looking at so many different settings we were kind of scrambling around quite a lot just to try and identify what datasets were available and to sort of gather them together. And also there were so many different types of data that we needed to drive this. So firstly, like you say, the health outcomes data, in some cases, there were specific datasets available for certain institution types, but we weren't always able to get access to those for various reasons. But there were also considerations like the sort of data that was published every day, there's sort of a nationwide aspect, when we're also looking at another data type is how people interact within these different settings. For that we used an awful lot of literature review. We spoke to people that work in the settings. We spoke to people that work in care homes, we spoke to care homes franchise owners to understand their staffing policies and things related to that. We also spoke to government departments like the Department of Justice. So, it was a lot of different data sources all sort of gathered together for the various aspects of this project. MF This model you've created, what's its future? Perhaps in different scenarios that might arise in the future. BA The model was very, very carefully constructed to be as flexible as possible at the time for potential future COVID variants in mind, but because of that, it means it's very adaptable to different infectious diseases. So if you change just a few input parameters, like the mortality rates, you know, the infection rate, a few factors like that, it's quite easy to transform this model to simulate the spread of other infectious diseases. So, things like flu, which has a big impact on care homes every year and has the potential to be used to better understand how to combat that. But another thing that I think is very useful about this model is it has the ability to help us in game plan for potential future pandemics, because I think it's fair to say that governments around the world when COVID came along, were kind of caught by surprise, or wrong-footed, sort of without a game plan of how to respond. And as we know, the early stages, whether it's a single pandemic or an individual outbreak, it's those early stages which are really, really critical. With this sort of model, we can gameplan you know, what response should we give if we have a future pandemic with these properties? Say we've got this transmissibility, it's got this mortality rate, we have tests that cost this much and they give you this accuracy. In that scenario, what should we do? And to be able to do that research upfront and to have some sort of game plan in mind so that if and when future pandemics come along, we are better prepared and can respond efficiently and quickly to try and have the best outcomes possible. So that's something I think is really exciting for the for the future of this model. MF Okay, that's beautifully explained, thank you very much indeed. Bill, so we've heard from Becky about how the data that she had to access had to come from many different places, but I guess that might have been an impediment to actually producing a model as rapidly in the pressing circumstances of the pandemic as it could potentially have been achieved. Does that suggest then that while the SRS has achieved on its own terms, a great deal, nevertheless, there have been limitations, and perhaps it's time to be doing this kind of data sharing across the public sector in a much bigger and better way? BS Yes. When I look at the sort of challenges and limitations around the SRS, I think there's probably three things, one of which is the ability to get the data sharing moving as fast as we need to meet this sort of policy need. The second area would be around the fact that actually the SRS is ageing technology now, and although it's performed really well, and especially during that sort of pandemic response we talked about earlier, it's fair to say it has struggled to cope with some of the really sort of heavy processing requirements that have come out of during that sort of COVID response. Some of the modelling required was much larger than the traditional sort of research projects we might have had in the SRS. And then the final thing is around some of the processes that we described earlier, that sort of five stages framework. All of our processes and rules apply to users, regardless of their sector. What that means is for government analysts who are seeking to access government data, working on government systems to inform government policy, there's a feeling that we could do things faster. Only 25% of our user base is government analysts at the moment, you know, I think that's something we certainly could improve to build that area of the service. MF Building the service then for the future is where Jason comes in, Jason Yaxley. As the director of the new Integrated Data Service, we've heard about potential, we've heard about the opportunity to do more in future. Tell us then about the Integrated Data Service, which promises to expand the amount of data available to researchers to speed up the delivery of it and to really produce a huge step-change or transformation in the ability of researchers to do this kind of work in the future. Is that a fair expectation? Jason Yaxley Hi Miles, pleased to be here. Yes, I think it's a very fair expectation. So I have the pleasure of being the programme director for the Integrated Data Programme, which will deliver the Integrated Data Service and the ONS is the lead delivery partner for all of government to deliver a transformation both in how government uses data, but also the underpinning technology that enables us to analyse and use that data much more quickly. And so that's a reason why we're one of the key enablers of the government's data strategy and why I view this very much as a transformation rather than just another big data lake where lots of government data goes and we can't really get into it. So, it's a really exciting opportunity. Were in the sort of middle stage of the programme where we have a service that is built and now we have to sort of grow it and expand it and get more data to really enhance its functionality, but it's a really exciting time. A really great job to have. MF And in terms of scale, what's the difference between IDS coming in, the Integrated Data Service, compared to the old, if I can put it that way, Secure Research Service? JY When it comes to the SRS, it is brilliant at what it does, but it's technology is starting to age and that is causing limitations. And I think what makes the Integrated Data Service sort of a step-change and perhaps unique across government falls into sort of four broad categories. There's the enabling infrastructure itself, which will be state of the art cloud-based, there is the data which will be much more friction free and will be quicker and easier to access data, use data, shar data. It will enable data visualisation in a way that's never been done before. And rather than having to do individual agreements to link one bit of data to a different bit of data, what we will have here is a service for people that will be scalable, repeatable, standardised, which makes it much much easier on a regular basis to link and index and then do research against much larger datasets much more quickly and produce faster results, which is going to be a huge benefit to the public good through the lens of better more informed and evidence-based policy decision making, that has much more statistical and analytical evidence that sits underneath it. And so we're transforming both the data access itself and the technology that enables that, but also the sort of almost the cultural lens through which we work together. We share information to simplify it. I really want to stress the IDS is keeping all the really good parts of SRS around the five safes, around the de-identification of data, protecting that data and ensuring that you know, public concerns about how government holds and uses data are entirely met. MF That's an obvious question isn't it, if this is happening much more widely on a much bigger scale, and how are those safeguards that were heard about from Bill going to be protected? How are they going to persist, and the same level of protection be provided? JY 2023 is a big year for the programme, particularly March when we hope and we're aiming to receive our own Digital Economy Act accreditation in the same way that the SRS has. So we will carry forward the same safeguards that SRS has used so successfully, as I say around the five safes around, how users are accredited, but through technology and through the service that we operate, to streamline and simplify that, particularly for government users using government data. So this is about that cultural journey as well as that technological journey. Very central to what we're doing is the security of data, the protection of data, you know, we have to convince all of the Chief Technical Officers and all the data analysts across Whitehall that we are as safe and as secure as we could possibly be. So that they'll be comfortable with us having access to that data. MF Other potential areas that most UK government data will be made available will be accessible by researchers. JY And that's the end game. Absolutely. As I say, we're on a journey at this point. Again, 2023 is important to us. We've just brought in what we're calling super early adopters, which are strategic experienced government analysts from both Whitehall departments and the devolved administrations, particularly Welsh Government right now, and we have brought census 2021 data into the system very early. And so we're already working with government analysts to start to do early exploratory projects that unlocks the information and the power of the census data against certain government priorities, for example, around the economy or around energy, and particularly, we're working with Welsh Government to look at what is the impact of recent economic situation on the Welsh farming community and how can we analyse the industry against the information that we hold in the census data and other data sources to find outcomes of what's happened in say, the last 10 years between the two census datasets. MF So what happens next, what are the next steps on this? And particularly what's the message to researchers who think that they would like to be involved in this project? JY 2023's really big steps are, as I've just mentioned, DEA accreditation, we reach the next level of maturity for our functionality also in in March, which means in the rest of 2023, having had these two points in time, we'll be in position to unlock the full sort of power of ideas, we will be wanting to encourage particularly more government researchers. Our aspiration is that every government professional analyst will be registered on and be able to use the service. We will accelerate our pipeline with Whitehall departments with data that we want to bring in. And over the life of the programme we will want to transition SRS itself, and its data and its users into IDS unlocking for those users as I say, the enabling technology of data visualisation, the speed and the pace, the scale. So, I at the moment feel that what we have is a huge warehouse with one corner that has data in it but the potential to fill it with as much data as we can in a way that is linked and matched and indexed. So that you can do much greater analytical research than hitherto has been possible. Just to illustrate that the way the way I like to think of it is there are a lot of people both in government and in academia that can do point to point linkage between dataset A, dataset B, and then run some research against it. And you can think of that perhaps as a ferry crossing a river from point A to point B on the other side, what helps visualise why IDs will be different is to think of us as a bridge and a road that goes over the river and so we can have multiple streams of traffic. We can have a much greater flow of information and research and all the agreements only have to be done once and then it's just repeatable from there. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to be working with the colleagues on the programme and colleagues across government and academia to deliver the transformation which we aim to complete by March 2025. So we still have some way to go to fully exploit all of the technology and get all the data in, but we're on our way. MF In the meantime however, there are a couple of examples already out there that listeners might care to check out for themselves if they haven't already. The first of which is the climate statistics data dashboard, creating a one-stop shop if you like for statistics on climate change related topics, bringing together data from around government, you can see it at climate-change.data.gov.uk and another one is the violence against women and girls data dashboard that's vawg.GSS-data.org.uk, which has been created as an important part of the government's 2021 tackling violence against women and girls strategy. And of course, the very popular and widely used COVID dashboard which continues to be available as well. So real living examples of the Integrated Data Service already serving the public benefit. Becky, if I could bring you back in again, if we're able to deliver on this and the warehouse as Jason described, it becomes bursting with data from right across government sources, presumably then in the future, the kind of work you told us about your award winning work during the pandemic will become that much faster, much easier to execute. Dr. Becky Arnold Yes, it really, really would. And I also can't understate how much the integration value of it of having things in the same place and linked just saves so much time and try to track down what data is available and then trying to combine it all together is such a undertaking. Having that sort of delivered there, sort of knowing what is available in a much more accessible way. Being able to use it much more readily would vastly, vastly speed up the sort of research that I did. But it would also be hugely, hugely valuable. MF Perhaps some of those listening to this Becky might be surprised actually at how difficult it has been to access public data like this in the past, and that government departments haven't collaborated in making it available in a single place. BA One of the biggest difficulties in doing the research I did was trying to get access. Just trying to find what datasets are out there is also a really, really big time sink and the idea of these all being integrated together and much more findable in a way that they aren't now is really, really exciting because it means that if you know what data there is you can use the most appropriate data for what you're trying to use, rather than trying to cobble together what you know exists and you can get your hands on. So integrating this all together in one place where it's findable. It would be a huge, huge win for the sort of research like what I did - or what my team did a lot more accurately. Another factor on that as well is the linking. It is so difficult if you've got different datasets compiled for completely different purposes by different departments - trying to combine those together is really hard. Even if they are about the same sorts of people, the same sorts of things. So having datasets that are already integrated would be a huge, huge step forward in trying to use that data as effectively as possible for the sort of research to drive evidence-based decision making in policy, which I think is something that is so important, and it's something I'm really passionate about. MF Becky, thank you very much for joining us. And thanks also to Jason Yaxley, and to Bill South for taking us through this important topic. I'm conscious that we've approached it largely through the perspective of researchers. And the whole issue of data ethics and how public good is assessed. It's something we've tackled in a previous podcast - do please listen to that and hear about the work of the data ethics committee as well because obviously, confidence in these kinds of initiatives, public trust in these kind of initiatives, depends very much on people understanding the ethical framework under which this work goes on. That's another big topic we will return to in the future, no doubt, and also track progress in the development, the ongoing development, of the Integrated Data Service and tracking the progress of some of the fantastic research projects that have already resulted from this kind of work and the potential ones very excitingly in future too, as well. I'm Miles Fletcher, and thanks once again for listening to Statistically Speaking. You can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms. Our producers at the ONS are Steve Milne and Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye. ENDS

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

Miles is joined by colleagues from the Health and Life Events team to explore how data is good for our health. Within the diagnosis: the Health Index, dubbed "the GDP of health"; the impacts of Covid-19 as well as an ageing society; and the increasing importance of linking data from numerous sources to generate complex insights that inform decision-making. TRANSCRIPT MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to Statistically Speaking the Office for National Statistics podcast. This time we're taking the pulse of the nation's health and exploring the role of public data in making it better. Of course, we would say that statistics are good for you. We recommend at least five a day, but more seriously, what do the ONS figures say about the state of our health now? And what are we doing to create new and better statistical insights to support a healthier population in future? With us to examine all are ONS colleagues, Julie Stanborough, Deputy Director of Health and Life Events, Neil Bannister, Assistant Deputy Director of Health Analysis and, later in the podcast, Jonny Tinsley, Head of Health and Life Events Data Transformation. Julie to start with you. The World Health Organisation defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Now, the ONS has begun a major project that seeks to capture the key elements of that in one place and to a certain extent in one single number. Can explain what that is, and what it's all about? JULIE STANBOROUGH Yes, so that will be the Health Index, and as you say, it is kind of regarded as the GDP of health. And at its simplest, it allows the health of England and local authorities to be tracked over time, which allows greater understanding of the relationships between the drivers of health and health outcomes. So the index starts in England in 2015. And we've got data up to 2019, which is available online, but we're going to be publishing 2020 figures very shortly. MF So tell us about the nuts and bolts, what are the data sources here and how have they been put together? JS We've got a huge number of different data sources that go into the Health Index. We've grouped them into three different themes, that we have healthy people, healthy lives and healthy places. And we use data sources from within ONS, but also from across government, and more broadly, to give that really in-depth breadth of all the data that goes into health. MF What sort of factors, what sort of elements are we looking at? People living without serious health conditions? JS Yeah, so it's a whole range of things. For example, looking at child poverty through to access to green spaces, life expectancy, a whole range of different factors which contribute to whether a particular area is deemed to have high health index or a low health index. MF Is there particular value - because you can understand wanting to understand disparities at local level and we'll talk about that a bit a bit later - but boiling it down to a single reading, a GDP. That's a very ambitious thing. How useful, how relevant, is that figure going to be? Is it something that the future will look to us regularly and take as seriously as a big number like GDP? JS I'd really hope so. And I think because the complexity of health is so complex, if we can boil it down to one number and be able to track that over time, at a national level, or at a local level, that really helps people understand what's going on and helps them to engage, but equally because it has all the different data sources in there, it allows those policy makers in local authorities to be able to go into that data and explore what really is happening in their particular area. MF More than simply measuring the outputs or successes of the health services, it's about understanding a much wider range of factors as well as the environment in which people live and their socio-economic position as well. JS That's right. I mean, there are so many different aspects to it. And that's why the Health Index has so many different data sources in there. But because of that complexity, it makes it really difficult for people to understand what they should be doing to improve the health in their areas. So you need that breadth, but then the ability to aggregate it up into a single number helps with the accessibility. MF So the index will provide this big reading of this multi factor estimate of health but perhaps it'll be the case that it isn't so much what the index says at any given time, but how it changes over time, that'll be its real value. JS That's right. And it's being able to track that at a national level. And at a local level. We're going to be publishing 2020 results, but we're going to have to be quite careful with those results because it'd be the first year with the pandemic and so we'd expect to be seeing some changes as a result of the pandemic. But equally, some of the data collections will have changed as a result of not being able to interview people in the same way because of lockdown. So we're going to have to monitor that data over 2020 / 2021 and further to really see the impact of the pandemic. MF And provide also perhaps some measure of people's changing economic circumstances at a time when there's so much concern obviously around the cost of living. In the meantime, because this project the Health Index is still in its relative infancy of course we have a wealth of other data already that the ONS generates and brings in from elsewhere and works with. Of course the number one indicator of a nation's health is our life expectancy - how long we might be expected to survive. Tell us what's been happening - the broad picture - as far as life expectancy is concerned. JS Life expectancy, if I just explain what that is, is a statistical measure which estimates the average number of years a person can expect to live. So male life expectancy at birth in the United Kingdom for the years 2018 to 2020 was 79 years, and that compared to 83 years for females. And during the past two decades life expectancy has grown, but much faster growth appeared in the naughties, and during the 2010s. We've seen that life expectancy pretty much slow right down and flatten. MF As well as this obviously the key measure of life expectancy. There's another important dimension here and this is particularly relevant if we're talking about health and that of course is healthy life expectancy because it's all very well to be alive, but if you have not got a great quality of life, well that brings all sorts of other issues and it brings problems for the health service as well of course. Tell us about healthy life expectancy. What is that as a statistic, how is that measured? What are the characteristics that inform healthy life expectancy? JS It's slightly different to life expectancy. Healthy life expectancy is a measure of the average number of years someone can expect to live in good health or free from limiting illness, and in 2018 to 2020 male healthy life expectancy at birth in the UK was 63 years, which meant that you had 16 years of life in not good health. In contrast for females, they had 64 years of healthy life expectancy, which meant that they had 19 years of life in not good health. MF That's fascinating and obviously begs the question, has that period of healthy life expectancy been going up in line with overall life expectancy, or have people simply been living longer in poor health? JS Yeah, so between 2011/13 and 2018/2020, both males and females, there was no improvement in health and life expectancy. MF That goes some way to explaining some of the current pressures on the National Health Service. JS That's right. I mean, if you've got more people that aren't in good health and have limiting conditions that's going to have increasing pressure on our health services and our GP services. MF And it does mean also that people are dying from different things, and they might have died younger from different conditions. They're living longer, but perhaps in poorer and poorer health in many cases, and in the end, actually dying from different causes. What are the data saying? JS So there's a range of different factors which are associated with a healthy life expectancy, and things that you'd probably think yourself. So when we looked at areas across the country with the lowest healthy life expectancy, 29% of males aged 30 to 49 smoked compared to just 17% of those that were in the highest healthy life expectancy areas. So smoking is clearly one of the drivers. We've also looked at whether people are overweight, and more than one in eight children in the lowest healthy life expectancy areas became overweight between entering primary school and starting secondary school. In contrast, those in the highest healthy life expectancy areas, it was just one in every 10. So there's a number of different factors there that we can see are driving it. MF If any justification was needed on why public health campaigns tend to concentrate on issues like obesity and smoking that's starkly revealed in the numbers. So that's the big picture. That's what's happening at a national level. But tell us about the differences from place to place because the local variations are quite significant too, aren't they? JS That's right. So to commit those geographical variations, Ribble Valley in Lancashire is ranked the healthiest out of 307 local authority areas in England, and that's using the Health Index. MF And the least healthy? JS So we do have all those rankings, but we do try to not think about the scores in a sort of ranking capacity. The whole point of having this information put out there is for local authorities to be able to compare themselves with similar local authorities or their nearest neighbour and see how different aspects of health are given the different policy initiatives that they're implementing in their local areas. MF Because lo and behold, whenever these league tables – and I do emphasise that we don't claim them to be league tables, they're often seen as such - when they appear of course, people want to know where is top. Whereas, surprise surprise, normally it goes with socio-economic status doesn't it. To put it bluntly, the better off areas see the highest life expectancy and healthy life expectancy? JS Yes, that's right. And even for those areas, you'd want them to be perhaps comparing themselves to other similar areas with the same sort of socio demographics and then to think about where different aspects of, whether it's smoking prevalence or childhood obesity, how are those different areas responding, what are the policies that they're putting in place to try and improve those statistics. MF Because again, it's not a matter of stating the obvious, which is self-evident, isn't it? Health outcomes tend to be better in more prosperous areas. This has been well known for some time, although we opened a local paper the other day writing up some of these numbers and saying certain towns in the West Midlands have been named and shamed as having the worst health locally. This is emphatically not about naming and shaming areas, neither is it about stating the obvious. As you say it's about informing better health outcomes, so resources can be better targeted. JS That's right. I was actually looking at a Coventry Marmot city review, and they have been using a whole range of different public health measures to try and improve the outcomes in that area. And one of the key measures they use is healthy life expectancy. They're comparing the outcomes after a number of years in their area to what's been going on nationally. So it's helping them benchmark the initiatives that they've been putting in place MF As with the overall Health Index itself, it sets the standard doesn't it. Puts in numbers what is clearly self-evident, but useful numbers because they give you that sense of the scale of the issue at the local level. That's at least as far as England is concerned, but also we've been working with the devolved administrations around the United Kingdom as well, and what do we know about that picture? JS So on the Health Index, that's actually one of the areas that we were looking to expand. So the Health Index at the moment covers England – we would really like to develop them for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and then create a UK wide one as well. So that's something that we're looking to develop in the future. MF That's a work in progress, and a 'watch this space' then for forthcoming publications, both of the Health Index and of data being compared across the UK as well. So Neil, people are living longer, but with that experiencing a whole range of health conditions. Tell us what we're picking up in the data and what's changing. NEIL BANNISTER That's right Miles. So age is a very big important social determinant for health and an ageing society places a big burden on the health and social care systems in the country. Recent Census analysis from the 2021 Census showed that nearly one in five people in England and Wales was over 65 now, with the fastest increase happening in the 85 plus age group. So there really is a fundamental kind of growth in the ageing population, and that leads to increases in certain disease types. So for example, we know that being in an elderly age group you can experience being more disabled and having more multiple chronic and complex health conditions as well as there being an increase in dementia and Alzheimer's disease. So for example, with dementia, we know that around about 900,000 people in the UK have been diagnosed with dementia and by 2025 it is expected to reach around about 1 million people in the UK. In terms of how we look at it from our data within ONS, we know that 12.5% of all deaths that we record are caused by dementia and Alzheimer's, and it is the leading cause of death in age groups over 80 plus within England and Wales. MF That is a relatively recent development. NB That's right. So that's happened really over the last three to five years, we've seen this increase in the dementia and Alzheimer's as a leading cause of death in England and Wales. MF And is the rate of increase showing any sign of abating? NB Well, if you take away the COVID pandemic period, no, it doesn't. It looks like it's actually on track to continue to be the leading cause of death and with the new figures that we have in from Census showing there is an ageing population, and the age is increasing, we would expect there to be a continued increase in the number of deaths from dementia and Alzheimer's and, as I said, the number of diagnoses as well. MF Yes, that's a stark finding and something you'd suspect we're going to be hearing quite a lot more about. NB It's not just within the UK that this is occurring though. When you look across other economically developed countries. So looking at the data from the OECD, for example, we can see that Japan, Italy and Greece - these are countries with well-known elderly populations - they have a very high prevalence of dementia. The UK out of the 44 OECD countries UK is 15th highest in terms of the prevalence of dementia, which is equivalent to where Denmark is as well in terms of comparability. MF And that speaks loudly to some of the challenges the health system is going to face in future, and the social care sector as well, which is already under pressure in some respects. Tell us about the potential impacts there, what are we seeing? NB What we found during the pandemic is that there are big gaps in data around social care statistics and being able to understand that population within our society and that group in society. MF Is that because the sector is diverse, and it's sprawling and it's uncertain and in places it's quite informal? NB Absolutely. There are different types of social care. There's social care that happens within care residences, and there's also social care that happens within the home. There's a big private industry there as well as the public sector being involved. And trying to pull together information across that diverse and complex landscape is very difficult. MF What are we doing to try and close some of those gaps? NB So we're working very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care. They have a large programme of work to try and collate data and improve data collections across the piece. What we've been doing, we've been looking at particular areas. So we're looking at trying to understand more about self-funders - individuals who fund their own social care, as opposed to those who have the state to fund it for them. And other areas of what we're doing is to look also at the workforce in social care, which is very hard to track over time and to understand the size and scale of that workforce. So that's another area of work that we're doing. MF And this is just part of a much wider body of work going on across the ONS to try and shed new light on health inequalities in particular. NB Yes, that's right. So we are going to be using the Census, the 2021 census data, to really look in more detail at social care once that data becomes available. But what we have been able to do though, during the COVID pandemic, is use the 2011 census data to link to other sources to really understand how, for example, the COVID pandemic had impacts across a number of different groups in society. We were able to produce statistics for the first time looking at the impact that COVID had on particular ethnic groups, on religious groups, and on the disabled groups in society. MF And what did we discover about the unequal impacts of COVID? NB Yeah, so when we're looking at ethnicity for example, since the start of the period where the Omicron variant was more prominent, we found that the Bangladeshi ethnic group of males had the highest rate of death of COVID-19, as opposed to the white British group. And we also found that for females, the Pakistani ethnic group had the highest rate of death involving COVID-19, which is 2.5 times higher than that of the white British group MF On the topic of ethnicity, was it factors such as the nature of the occupations undertaken by those groups, or perhaps socio-economic status, living conditions and so forth? Or was there something, by the very nature of their ethnicity, that was actually contributing towards higher mortality? Have we got to the bottom of that? NB It's very hard to know that, Miles. What we've done is some complicated modelling to understand, and we've taken into account certain social demographic groups and economic factors, but we still do find that certain ethnic groups have a higher rate of death, even when taking into account those factors. Things that it could be, but we don't know the detail yet, could maybe be how people in those ethnic groups live in terms of having multi-generational households, for example, and maybe that was a contributing factor, but to understand that in more detail much more work is needed to be done. MF Another area where research remains in progress. And also more recently, we've gone into partnership with one of the world's great philanthropic organisations to try and uncover what's going on behind some of these inequalities. NB That's correct. So there's a piece of work that we're doing working with the Wellcome Trust and the Race Equality Foundation. And what we're trying to do is to understand that there are different sources of ethnicity data within the health system and also with our Census data as well. What we know is that there are different qualities of how that data is recorded. What we're doing with the Wellcome Trust is to really understand the quality of the data across the different sources so we can provide a better understanding of the analysis that can be done with those data sources, which is really important as its data itself, which is a fundamental building block of any analysis that we can undertake. And the quality of that. MF It's quite hard to disentangle the effects of the pandemic at the moment, and it's probably worth discussing those. Are we in a position yet to know how life expectancy has been affected by COVID? NB At the moment, we have some indication. So the last publication we produced for healthy life expectancy covered the period of 2018 to 2020, which has a period of a COVID pandemic within that analysis, and that did show that there has been a drop in healthy life expectancy both in England, Wales and Scotland. But what we don't know for certain yet is the full impact of that because we haven't had the data to analyse for the entire pandemic period. And that's work that's ongoing within the office. MF So we will in due course then be able to get a much better understanding to what extent life expectancy might have been impacted by long COVID. But in the meantime, other ONS data suggest that a lot of people at least say or think they are suffering long term effects from it. JULIE STANBOROUGH That's right. We estimate over 2 million people in the population are experiencing long COVID. And it is self-reported long COVID. So we collect this data from the COVID Infection Survey, which was started at the beginning of the pandemic and people are reporting whether they're experiencing a whole range of different symptoms, which are associated with long COVID. And we've been monitoring that on a monthly basis to see whether those numbers have been increasing or decreasing and which types of people in the population are more likely to be experiencing long COVID. MF And what's been the pattern of those numbers? JS It's actually been broadly stable, a slight upward trend but broadly stable over time, and you would hope that over time it will start to drop down, but we're not in that situation at the moment. MF So the data at the moment is seeming to suggest that - so obviously, we know a lot of people have been infected - a lot of people seem to be suffering symptoms for a protracted period afterwards, but at least as far as the data are concerned, they will tend to imply a lot of those people are getting better. JS So we measure whether people are experiencing long COVID after a set number of weeks. So there's a significant proportion of people that still experiencing long COVID At least 12 months after their first infection – it is a small group but it is a significant number of people. But of course it has impacts on their ability to go about their day to day lives. Look after family, go to work, study. So it does have a significant impact on people MF And what sort of effects are they reporting? JS So it can be a range of things from fatigue, breathing difficulties to perhaps more severe symptoms. So a whole range of different symptoms. MF What further analysis are we doing on the impacts of COVID generally? We've explored differences in ethnicity, other characteristics as well. Tell us a little about that work and what's up next for this programme of research. JS As you say, yes, we've done a whole range of different analysis to support the COVID pandemic. A lot of the analysis that we have produced has gone into the COVID Insights tool, which is on the ONS website. And that brings together a range of different data and analysis around hospitalizations, infections and deaths but also tries to put it into a sort of societal context, in terms of wellbeing, and employment as well. It's actually one of the most looked at on the ONS site. MF So even though the pandemic subsides - as at least we hope it will - a lot of work will continue to assess its full impact. JS That's right. It will be trying to understand in more depth what happened during the pandemic as well as monitoring the long-term effects, either on employment or in terms of people experiencing long COVID. MF The ability to link data to provide complex insights, of course, is such an important area of research at the moment. And that brings us to Jonny Tinsley. Jonny this is very much your area of expertise. And with that in mind, tell us about the Public Health Data Asset. What is that and how does that bring together data in that very useful way? JONNY TINSLEY During the pandemic data became incredibly important to understand what was going on and a lot of data sources in the health space exist. The NHS collects an awful lot of information about people and a lot of other organisations produce analysis, including the NHS themselves of that data. But one of the things that is unique to ONS is its access to non-health data and in particular, the Census data. By bringing in some of that health data from the NHS, which we're able to do for statistical purposes, we were then able to link that with the Census 2011 data and also our mortality data and create what we call the Public Health Data Asset. And what that effectively gives us is a huge cohort of people that were here in 2011, at the Census and then in combination with that mortality and health data able to analyse, giving it such a huge cohort of people. It allows us to have quite a lot of power and the statistics we can produce and pick up. Some of the differences that Neil was talking about actually, because the Census data includes things like ethnicity, religion, and disability status. We're able then to look at differences across those groups for things like COVID-19 mortality. MF So we can track essentially, as I understand it, we can track what's happened to individuals' health over that period of time, from the information supplied to Census and from their interactions with the NHS and other public services? JT To give a specific example, what we can do is for these different groups, so the Census effectively allows us to separate out the groups. For example, it shows that these people are of this ethnicity whereas these people are of this ethnicity, and then for those groups we will then know which people have died and when and what was the cause, in particular during the pandemic obviously, whether that cause was COVID-19. And then the main thing the health data has allowed us to do so far is look for what we would call comorbidities. So who has pre-existing conditions that put them at risk of poor outcomes from conditions such as COVID-19 in this particular case, MF And that will help the health services to be more predictive of the sort of conditions people are likely to face? JT Yes, to a degree. So some of that was already known. But what it allows us to do is if a particular ethnic group tends to suffer from certain conditions more than another, by taking those co-morbidities into account, we can do what we would probably, in layman's terms, call 'control' for them in the models, and therefore effectively discount them. And if any differences still remain after that, between different ethnic groups, then something else must be going on. And as Neil says, one factor for example could be the multi-generational households impacting how likely it is for transmission to happen. MF And as well as differences by ethnicity and other characteristics it allows this to be done at a very, very local level as well, because of the sheer scale of these databases. JT From a data point of view, that's a really interesting question, because we have the COVID Infection Study, which Julie mentioned earlier, and whenever we do a survey we try and make it as representative as possible. So obviously it's not everyone. It might still be several hundred thousand people, as it is with the COVID infection study, but ideally it's made to be as representative of the population as possible, such that if 2% of the sample are infected with COVID-19 that week, it probably means that 2% of the whole population of England and Wales also are. But one of the downsides to doing a survey is even if you have a large number of participants, the statistics you're able to produce are at a really low level, this isn't as good because the number of people you have available in a small area that are actually in your study can be really, really small. And it can also make it more difficult to pick up these differences between groups, such as ethnic groups. Whereas when you've got the Census data, because you've got a much larger sample of people in your study, it gives you more statistical power and you can pick up the differences more easily, and produce lower-level statistics more easily. The downside, because there's always upsides and downsides when it comes to data quality, is that the 2011 Census data is now somewhat out of date. And the cohort, the kind of study population we had available to us, by definition excluded anyone who's been born since 2011, and anyone who's immigrated to the country since 2011. Because you know, they weren't here for us to pick up in the Census in 2011. So there's some work we've done to think about just how representative what we're calling the Public Health Data Asset is in terms of who is included and who isn't, compared to the people that are actually here in the country right now and have been during the pandemic, if that makes sense. MF Potentially, this is an incredibly valuable resource, but primarily who is it for and what are they going to use it for? JT To an extent they were for the general public of course, but also important stakeholders - decision makers during the pandemic like the scientific advisory group for emergencies (SAGE). Listeners will probably be familiar with people like Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and so these sorts of decision makers were finding everything we were doing really useful and at times even commissioning us to produce particular statistics or analysis using this really powerful dataset that we had available to us. I mean, one aspect of this that I think is really important to talk about is data protection, confidentiality and kind of ethical uses. So to be clear that we take our responsibilities when it comes to the Census data really seriously and as many people know, we don't release Census data until 100 years after it's been collected. And when we get in other data for statistics that's of a sensitive nature, like the health data, we have all sorts of processes in place to secure that in our secure data systems and ensure that only highly trained security cleared staff can access it. So primarily, we're talking about substantive ONS employees who are specially trained using this data for statistical purposes. We will then use the data to produce the statistics that our users are telling us they need the most. MF Yes, it's well worth emphasising the data protection side there because obviously we are talking about vast amounts of highly sensitive data. And if anyone's interested in finding out more about how we approach those issues at the ONS, do please have a listen to our podcast on data ethics, where we explore that topic in some detail. Overall then, a lot of ground-breaking work going on, a lot of new data coming in and we have to say that it has actually been picking up some prestigious awards. JT That's right Miles. Some of the work we've talked about has won a number of awards, probably the most prestigious being the RSS Campion award for official statistics. MF After hearing a lot of really quite sombre detail over the course of our conversation today, it's good perhaps to end on a relatively upbeat note. At least people can be assured that so much work, so much research, is going on to try and anticipate some of these problems before they manifest fully. And we hope of course to contribute to improving health outcomes over the longer term. So that's it for this episode of Statistically Speaking, I'm Miles Fletcher. Thanks very much to our guests Julie Stanborough, Neil Bannister and Jonny Tinsley. Thanks very much to you for listening once again. You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all other major podcast platforms. Thanks again to our producer at the ONS Steve Milne for this episode and, until next time, goodbye. ENDS

In this episode of Statistically Speaking Miles is helped with his enquiries by Meghan Elkin and Billy Gazard from the Office for National Statistics, as he investigates how we use data to get valuable insights into the impact of crime on modern society. Along the way he debunks common misconceptions; learns how the nature of crime continues to evolve; and uncovers the work being done behind-the-scenes to make crime data more inclusive. TRANSCRIPT MILES FLETCHER Hello, and welcome again to 'Statistically Speaking' the Office for National Statistics podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher and in this episode, we're going to be investigating crime. What is the statistical evidence that despite the impression you might have got from the media, overall crime in England and Wales has actually been falling? Or is it the case that the nature of crime has simply changed and we're more likely these days to be targeted online than in the streets, and what in any case is the value of understanding the overall level of crime when that term captures such a wide and varied range of social ills and harms? Helping us with our enquiries today are Meghan Elkin, head of the ONS centre for crime and justice, and Billy Gazard head of acquisitive crime and stakeholder engagement. Meghan, so much to talk about in the many and varied crime figures that ONS produces, but let's focus first on where those numbers come from. In this case, there are two major data sets and the first and arguably the most significant of those, statistically at least, is a very large survey and it's not information gathered from the police or government. It's information that comes directly from people and their experience of crime. Tell us all about that. MEGHAN ELKIN That's correct. So the best source we have for measuring crime is the crime survey for England and Wales and this is a massive undertaking. We interview around 34,000 people aged 16 and over each year, and over 2000 children, and we really appreciate everyone who takes the time to respond to our survey as it helps us to produce these important figures. As you said, crime covers a wide range of offences and there's no perfect source, but the crime survey has had an established methodology over a long period of time, which really helps us to get a good idea of the trends and changes in society that people are experiencing. MF Give us a sense of the scale of this operation. Is it one of the biggest surveys the ONS runs? ME It is, I would say that we are consistently speaking to 34,000 people each year and what's probably different to most surveys is that we have children as part of the response as well. So when we go to a household, we'll interview an adult, so someone aged 16 and over, to ask about their experiences. If there are children aged 10 to 15 in their household. We'll also ask if one of them would be able to complete our children's survey so that we get a picture of the crime that they're experiencing as well. MF And what is the particular value of speaking people to people face to face in their homes like that? ME I mean, the real value of the crime survey for measuring the trends is that it doesn't matter if people have reported what they've experienced to the police or not, so unlike police recorded crime, it doesn't have that impact. And so we can ask people about their experiences in the last 12 months. We'll also ask them questions about their attitudes towards crime related issues such as the police and amount of security that they have, and for the most sensitive questions rather than being asked by the interviewer directly, we'll give someone a tablet so that they can complete those questions privately themselves to ensure that confidentiality and confidence in telling us such sensitive information. MF That's taken the survey into some quite new areas, hasn't it in recent years, would you like to talk about some of those developments? You talk about actually, and this is highly unusual, of course a very sensitive area, it's about the ability to actually speak to children as well. Tell us to what end that work has been directed... ME So for children in particular, we've been working closely with a number of stakeholders to understand what's most useful for us to ask children. So we do collect their general experiences of crime in the last 12 months, but we also ask them about their experiences online and that's provided some really useful data about children's lived experiences about being bullied and whether that's happening at school or online, but also the behaviours and activities that sometimes could be quite risky that they're taking part in online. And that's given some new information into that sector that we had just not understood before, and has been really useful in shaping policy and understanding how children can be better protected online. MF So this is quite an intensive encounter with the ONS data gatherer as they're sitting down for about 40 to 45 minutes or so. But how are the people selected? And how do you go about ensuring that they're a good representative sample and that we're not missing out important sections of the population, which, on a subject like this, of course, it's very important to get a really accurate picture of how people are experiencing crime at that grassroots level. ME So we use a postcode address file, basically a list of addresses to sample from, so households are chosen at random to ensure that we've got a representative sample for England and Wales. That's why it's really important and we really appreciate people responding to the survey because that's how we ensure good quality data, by getting that good, rounded sample. MF So there's a lot of rich data coming out of the crime survey, but by its nature, it doesn't cover some of the more serious offences does it? ME No that's true, particularly the higher harm but lower volume crimes, for example knife crime, those don't appear in the survey very often. And so we look to other data sources for those. It also excludes crimes that are often termed "victimless", such as possession of drugs, which again, we then measure through different sources. MF And that is where the other major data source starts to become more relevant. We're looking at very serious offences particularly, including murder and rape. Those offences are covered by the police and their recording of crime. Tell us about the value of that data, and how that contributes to the wider understanding of crime. ME So the police record all the crimes that are reported to them and those are fed into us via the Home Office as a record of police recorded crime. And it has lots of advantages as a data source in that for some crime types, it is a good measure. And unlike the crime survey for those crime types, it can be very good at looking at short term trends. So particularly through the pandemic it was helpful for some of those crime types where we know that it's a better measure. But we also know that there are a lot of crimes that people don't report to the police and that's where that source of data struggles the most, particularly for really hidden crimes. Rape would be one of those crimes, where relatively few people do report that to the police so it doesn't appear in the numbers as much. But the police figures are subject to changes in recording practices. So when new offences are introduced that obviously changes how the count is put together, but also it's impacted by police activity and how they record and that also will change the numbers. When you see increases in police recorded crime, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean that crime has gone up. And that's part of our work at ONS to unpick and understand what's going on there. But it does have benefits as you say, for some of the higher harm but lower volume crimes that we see, homicide it records very well, and for knife crime it's our best measure. So there's definitely a place for it as a data source still. MF So two major data sources contributing to this bigger picture. And what has that bigger picture been showing us these last few years? ME Well when we look across trends in general, actually, over time, crime has been decreasing since the mid 90s, and has been more flat in recent years. So the crime survey estimated around 20 million offences in 1995. And we've seen that decreasing over time and our latest data shows that it's around 5 million offences. And that's when you're using a comparable estimate. So the overall picture is very much if that crime sits much lower than it used to in the mid 90s. And that's not just a pattern that we've seen in England and Wales. It's a pattern that's reflected across other countries, across Europe and America. And it's something that lots of people have tried to understand what's really driven that long term change. More recently we have seen some decreases, some of them very much linked to the pandemic. But now as we look and compare before the pandemic to our most recent data, we have still seen some decreases. I think it's always important to point out that while total crime is a useful measure and reflection, it's only when you really start digging into the individual crime types that you can start seeing some trends that just get averaged out when you look at the total. MF Yes, you need to understand what kind of offences we're talking about. And if we talk about that long term picture, isn't it the case that we saw, coming out of the 1980s into the 1990s, turn of the century, violent crime decreasing, damage to property and so forth and theft from cars. Was that the broad trend that we saw? ME Yeah, so we've seen decreases in that time period across a number of crime types. One of the most popular explanations of the overall pattern there is the "security hypothesis", which is very much built on the widespread improvements we've seen in security devices which have prevented crimes from happening and caused that decrease. So you mentioned there of vehicles, vehicle theft has decreased, most likely due to some things like improvements in central deadlocking systems and electric immobilisers, those security measures that have improved so much. But we have also seen decreases in violence across that time as well. MF Threat to property is one thing of course, but yes, personal safety and and our well-being on the streets, is of course a major factor as well. Talk us through the trends on that because if you rely entirely on the news media for your understanding of violent crime, you probably think that things are in a pretty desperate situation. ME So when we look back over that long term picture again, the estimate that we have from the crime survey for violence shows that there were around 4.5 million offences in 1995 And that compares to 1.2 million in the most recent data. Obviously, we've talked about the limitations to the crime survey data for understanding violence, but the more serious crimes within this type that we don't see in the crime survey are at much lower levels. They are lower volume, thankfully, and so we have seen some patterns there of variation during the pandemic. MF Another important development these last few years, of course, has been getting a much better understanding of the nature and extent of child abuse, an area of huge sensitivity and massive public concern. Can you talk a little about the work that's been going on in that area? ME So we've been conducting a feasibility study over the last few years to look at whether a measure of prevalence of child abuse could be estimated. A few years ago we put together a compendium of statistics on child abuse to help people understand the levels of child abuse and the nature of child abuse being experienced in our society. But the major gap in that evidence base is a prevalence level for what's being experienced now by children. We do in the crime survey for England and Wales ask people about the experiences they had as children. So we asked that of adults and that gives us some insight but it's still not helping policymakers understand what's actually happening in society today. So we've been conducting lots of research to understand the challenges, and how we might be able to overcome those of asking children such sensitive questions. And that work has been going really well, we're now at the stage of looking at what questions could actually be asked and the safeguarding that would need to wrap around that survey to look after the children completing it. So we're working very closely with DFE and Ofsted and schools to understand how that might best work going forward. So that's the next stage of that project. MF What has that experience and that engagement brought to this highly sensitive topic? ME We work very closely with the NSPCC, who have been extremely supportive of the project and how it's developing and helping us understand the safeguarding procedures that we might be able to use with a survey, and the support that we can give children and the different ways of doing that. There's a careful balance of helping children feel they are able to open up and tell us about experiences while also then safeguarding them and managing that challenge of confidentiality. And the NSPCC and others like them, obviously have great experience of being in this place and supporting children that we can then take on board to make sure that we do the survey in the best way possible. MF That's going to remain an important piece of work for the future. If there's one really important use of all this data, it is to understand the risks that any of us face of becoming the victim of crime at any given time. Billy, what are the numbers saying about that? BILLY GAZARD So I think it's quite a complicated picture. When we're talking about all the crime that the crime survey measures, for example, just under one in five people would have experienced a crime in the last 12 months according to the latest data, but obviously that varies across different crime types. So for example, fraud, about one in 12 people would have experienced fraud in the last 12 months, whereas offences such as violence, only about 2% of the population would have experienced a violent offence in the last 12 months. MF That overall is kind of reassuring, I guess, but nevertheless, those are significant sections of the population. BG Yes, I agree. That still translates into a lot of people experiencing that crime. So obviously, it's really important that we continue to monitor levels of violence moving forward to see how that changes over time. MF And if you break it down by geography, I guess of course, in some areas, those risks, particularly of violence and crimes against property are going to be much higher? BG This is looking at the national picture, but there will be variations at geographical levels, as well as by lots of different characteristics. For example, we know that younger people are at more risk of experiencing violence than older sections of the population. MF So that's the overall picture, but Meghan the risks might be rather different if you happen to be female. MEGHAN ELKIN There are some crime types that disproportionately affect women and girls compared to men and boys. Say for example, we estimate 1.6 million women aged 16 to 74 suffered domestic abuse in the last year and that one in three women over the age of 16 were subjected to at least one form of harassment in the last year. So there again, there is that variation in crime types that people are experiencing. And when we look at measures around domestic abuse, again, the crime survey for England and Wales is our most trusted measure. And as I reflected earlier, those are the crime types where we actually give respondents a tablet so that they can complete those questions confidentially. And actually, that posed us a particular challenge during the pandemic where our face-to-face interviewing had to stop and we moved to telephone interviews, and we managed to make that switch very quickly to be able to keep getting the crime estimates that were needed to understand society. But we did think there was a risk of asking people on the telephone those really sensitive questions about experiences of domestic abuse and sexual assault, but the concerns around confidentiality and respondent safeguarding were just too great for us to be able to ask those questions. So for a period of time, we weren't collecting that information when the survey returned to the field, though, we went back as early as we could so that we could start collecting those important topics again. And we now have the first data from those for domestic abuse since before the pandemic started. Now that we've started to get the face-to-face survey back into publication, some caution needs to be taken for interpreting those results. Because of how the surveys come back there are some challenges to quality and so again, we need to be a bit cautious in interpreting them, but it's so important that we've got those figures back. And actually what we see from the crime survey is that there's been no change in the prevalence of domestic abuse in the most recent data when compared to before the pandemic. But this is an opportunity to show how we use multiple data sources to really understand what might be going on in society and what people are experiencing. Because while the crime survey has now shown no change in the prevalence of domestic abuse, we have seen increases throughout that time in police recorded crime data. And we've also seen increases in data that we collect from charities. We work closely with a range of charities in the domestic abuse space to understand the changes that are happening to their services and the demand they're seeing, but also to help us understand the nature of abuse. So during lockdowns for example, we saw a 22% increase in calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline for the year ending March 21, so there was definitely that increase in demand. But now combining that with the crime survey evidence that we haven't seen an increase in prevalence, actually that helps us understand that maybe that increase in demand from charities primarily came from a lack of other coping mechanisms and people reaching out in different ways to get the support they needed during that difficult time. MF And that would be seem to be a very valuable example of using other data sources than police recorded crime to get an accurate picture of what's going on, because of the simple reluctance that so many people have in reporting these experiences when they happen to them. ME Yes, that's true. I mean, the evidence we have is that one in five victims of partner abuse in the last year would have told the police, and that just shows how hidden these crime types are. And that's true when you look into sexual assault as well, where one in six tell us that they would have told the police about what happened to them. And that's an area where we haven't used charity data before to help us understand sexual assault, but it's something we're working on at the moment to be included in next year's publication. MF Are there other areas of offending where we could possibly get a better picture than we currently have at the moment? ME So harassment is also an area that in initial work on violence against women and girls, we found that actually there wasn't as much data as we thought there might be to help understand that situation. So we used some questions on the opinion survey last year to help us understand levels of harassment at a very basic level, for lack of a better description. But we've now introduced new questions on the crime survey as well to help us understand that topic. But again, I think that's going to be one where when that data becomes available to us to analyse we'll be able to start looking at other groups and organisations we'd like to work with to understand better that situation and support our efforts to make our statistics more inclusive. Working with stakeholders really helps us to look for these new data sources and new insights, to really understand the scale and nature of crime that people are experiencing. MF So Billy, just as the recording of crime evolves over time, so does what we consider to be a criminal offence. Tell us about the offences of the past, and what acts were regarded as criminal in their day and are no longer. BILLY GAZARD Yes I think it's important to remember that our laws are always changing to reflect the concerns of our society as it evolves. Something that was criminal hundreds of years ago might sound pretty absurd today. So for example, playing football used to be an offence in mediaeval times, there was punching the ball as well as kicking the ball and deaths were not uncommon. MF That's not a well-known fact! BG It actually became an offence in 1388 and wasn't repealed until 1845. MF And were any people prosecuted? I think we know we know what the sentence was... BG The sentence for breaking this law was actually six days in prison. There are no stats on how many people were punished for breaking this law or how many people were put in prison for that. Another offence it seems absurd today, but we do have some stats on how many people actually were prosecuted for this is witchcraft. This actually became an offence in 1542 and it wasn't repealed until 1736 and during this time 500 witches were put on trial and over 100 of those were executed. MF Grisly stuff! History has moved on, and of course these days we're dealing with some very 21st century phenomenon, and that of course is the growth of online crime, cybercrime and and phishing scams. Tell us about the emergence of that type of offending. What has happened over the last few years and what is the position now? BG So what we've seen with fraud and computer misuse offences is very different to what we've seen with other types of offences. But unfortunately, we've only been starting to measure fraud and computer misuse offences on the crime survey since 2017. So we don't have the same long standing time series that we have for the other crime types, and this is obviously because a lot of online crime, this is a fairly new phenomenon, so we've taken our time to really develop those questions and now they are on the survey. What we have seen over the last five years since we started recording these offences is that those offences have stayed fairly flat over that time period. Over the pandemic however, we did see an increase in fraud and computer misuse offences during that period and we think that's probably to do with people spending more time at home and spending more time online. And what we did see in terms of fraud, we saw that the proportion of fraud incidents that were cyber related increased up to almost two thirds, from about 50% before the pandemic. So it suggests that actually, a lot of the rise in fraud offences that we did see were because of a rise in cyber related fraud rather than offline fraud. MF One popular conception is that it's mainly elderly people who are the targets of this online crime, but that's not actually the case is it? BG No. And definitely, when we look at our data, that's definitely not something that we're finding. Actually what we find is that adults aged 75 years or older are actually less likely to be victims of fraud. It's those in working age groups, adults aged 25 to 44 for example, who are more risk of receiving phishing messages, those employed and those living in less deprived areas are much more likely to receive those messages. And that might be to do with fraudsters targeting those groups because they know that they have more disposable money. So definitely older people are at less risk than the working population. MF So there is something in this argument perhaps that crime generally has moved online? BG I think there's definitely an argument that a lot more crime is happening online, and we're definitely seeing that with fraud incidents. We have less data on other crime types, though obviously the internet and the act of being online can be used across many crime types. For example, harassment, stalking, these are other offenses that people can use online tools to commit. And that's something that we're always trying to improve on the crime survey, to introduce those types of questions so that we can get a better understanding of how online tools are being used to commit crimes. MF So online crime is a relatively recent development, but crime and offending of course, continues to develop unfortunately and go in different directions. Tell us about other developments that the ONS has got in hand. To try and either capture new types of offending or perhaps just get a better insight on more established patterns of crime and harm. BG In the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), we ask people living in private households lots of questions about their experiences with crime so we can produce an estimation of how much crime that group of people is experiencing. That's about 98% of the population of England and Wales. But what the survey doesn't cover is people who do not live in private households. This covers, for example, people living in residential care settings, or homeless people, students living in student halls. So although this is only about 2% of the population, these groups have very different experiences of crime. And it's really important that we also try and capture their experiences so that we can provide information for policymakers to take action on the crime that those groups are experiencing. One of the things that we're trying to do is produce a publication looking at crimes experienced by non-household populations as well. So we're currently doing some work investigating what other data sources are available that we can use to shine the light on it at ONS and share that information alongside what we do with household populations. So we're going to be going out talking to various stakeholders, talking to different data holders to see how can we work together to bring a picture of all the data that we have and better understand what the risks are for these groups in terms of experiencing crime and how can we bring all of that together. MF So as crime continues to evolve you can count on one thing, the ONS will continue to measure it, and explore it, and hopefully contribute to solving it. Thanks very much to Meghan Elkin and Billy Gazard. I'm Miles Fletcher, and you've been listening to 'Statistically Speaking'. You can subscribe to new episodes of the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all other major podcast platforms. Our producers at the ONS are Steve Milne and Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye.