§ Mr. Gordon MarsdenTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what action his Department will take in response to the recent report by the Statistics Commission on the accuracy of the 2001 census for the Westminster city council area; [136989]
(2) if he will ask the Statistics Commission to investigate the accuracy of the 2001 census in Blackpool; [136990]
169W(3) what assessment his Department has made of the implications for the reliability of the census population statistics for Blackpool of the recent Statistics Commission report on the accuracy of the 2001 census for Westminster. [136991]
§ John HealeyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Gordon Marsden, dated 11 November 2003:
As National Statistician and Registrar General for England and Wales I have been asked to reply to your recent questions asking: what action will be taken in response to the recent report by the Statistics Commission on the accuracy of the 2001 census for the Westminster City Council area (136989), whether the Statistics Commission will be asked to investigate the accuracy of the 2001 census count in Blackpool (136990) and what assessment has been made of the implications for the reliability of the census population statistics for Blackpool of the recent Statistics Commission report on the accuracy of the 2001 census for Westminster. (136991)
It is for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to take forward the recommendations from the report by the Statistics Commission on the accuracy of the 2002 census for Westminster. ONS has welcomed this report and is considering what action is required. The Statistics Commission has made several recommendations about how ONS should proceed with Westminster, and recognised that this work was already underway. A report on the Westminster and Manchester exercise is planned for Spring 2004.
The Statistics Commission report on the Census in Westminster concluded that no alternative approach would have produced more reliable results overall and that it seems likely that the 2001 Census was significantly better than any of its recent predecessors. The Statistics Commission's report does make a number of recommendations for further work that should be carried out by ONS but the Commission made no proposals about which ONS had not already published our intention to act or to carry out further research.
Although I recognise that there was a relatively large fall in the 2001 Census-based population estimate for Blackpool compared to previous estimates, I am not aware of any particular cause for concern about the latest published population estimates for Blackpool. If you have some work that challenges this judgement, I would most certainly respond to it.
The Statistics Commission is an independent body and it is not my role to attempt to influence their work programme.
On 4 November, I published a revised population estimate for Manchester that took account of the results of the address matching exercise. This was accompanied by a document outlining the process that ONS intend to adopt to periodically validate the annual population estimates of local authorities. I will arrange for this document to be sent to you, along with two recent ONS reports (on population statistics and our approach to the next Census) that you may find of value.