§ Mr. LuffTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the conclusion of Professors Oswald and Blanchflower, on page 4 of the second report on Calculating an Appropriate Regional Funding Adjustment for Worcestershire on the stance of the Office of National Statistics on access for researchers to check the Government's calculations relating to the Area Cost Adjustment. [177066]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Peter Luff, dated 23 June 2004:
As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your recent question on the conclusion of Professors Oswald and Blanchflower on the stance of the Office of National Statistics on allowing access for researchers to check the Government's calculations relating to the Area Cost Adjustment. (177066),
Professors Oswald and Blanchflower conclude that a decision has been made by ONS not to release micro-data from the New Earnings Survey (NES) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS) in order to prevent researchers from checking the government's calculations of the Regional Funding Adjustment. No such decision has been made. On the contrary, ONS policy is to support statistical research in the academic community by supplying micro-data in as much detail as possible, within any legal constraints and with respect to the duty of confidence owed to survey respondents.
Access to confidential NES micro-data is covered by legislation, including the Statistics of Trade Act (1947), and there is no provision to allow access for the research that Professors Oswald and Blanchflower would like to perform. Non-disclosive, fully anonymised NES micro-data is not covered by legislation can be provided to researchers on request. However, the measures taken to prevent disclosure include the removal of small area geographical indicators, which may make the data unsuitable for Professors Oswald and Blanchflower's purposes.
ONS offers secondments to researchers working on behalf of ONS for purposes consistent with the aims of National Statistics and of benefit to ONS. As secondees to ONS, these researchers may use the ONS Business Data Linking research facility which holds identifiable, disclosive, disaggregated NES datasets. Professors Oswald and Blanchflower may wish to explore this option further and should contact Prabhat Vaze at ONS (telephone 020 7533 5905) for further information.
The Labour Force Survey is voluntary, and not governed by legislation. However, information collected in the survey is confidential and subject to the common law duty of confidentiality and the Data Protection Act (1998). The obligation of confidentiality is reinforced by a pledge given to survey respondents, which states that no identifiable information they provide will be passed to any government department or member of the public.
Non-disclosive, fully anonymised LFS micro-datasets are available at the UK Data Archive and are available to the academic research community. However, as for the NES, small area geographical indicators have been removed to prevent disclosure, which may make the data unsuitable for Professors Oswald and Blanchflower's purposes. The Business Data Linking research facility does not presently hold any LFS microdata.
Supporting research is one of the aims of National Statistics, but data access arrangements are bound by the National Statistics Code of Practice and Protocols and by legal and professional constraints that may limit access to confidential data. Compliance with these statutory and common law duties does not constitute a decision to prevent researchers' access to data. It is critically important that these obligations are met, in order to maintain public confidence in the integrity of official statistics and the 1411W security of the confidential data on which they are based. Failure to do so would undermine participation in future data collections, reducing the reliability and value of official statistics for all users.
In comparison to National Statistics Institutes in other countries, ONS goes to great lengths to enable the use of its microdata for research purposes. We recognise that access to microdata by reputable researchers (within the legal and professional constraints discussed above) adds much to the value and trust of official statistics. It is therefore disappointing that my office's application of these constraints has been subject to criticism.