§ Mr. Matthew BanksTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what changes to labour market statistics the director of the Office for National Statistics will introduce following the Steel report; and if he will make a statement. [191]
§ Mr. Kenneth ClarkeThe director of the Office for National Statistics has conducted wide-ranging consultation on the Steel report both inside and outside Government. This showed some support for monthly publication of employment and unemployment and estimates from the labour force survey, but also doubts about whether the additional £7 million to £8 million annual cost of redesigned and enlarged survey represented value for money. An alternative option, costing an additional sum of around £200,000 a year, was also considered based on monthly publication of three-month rolling average estimates from the existing quarterly survey. The benefits of this in terms of informing macro-economic debate could, however, be diminished by potential problems of misunderstanding estimates which related not to individual months but to rolling three-month periods.
6WAccordingly, ONS will retain the current quarterly frequency of publication for the LFS. The Government have, however, accepted the recommendation, in the Employment Select Committee's report on unemployment and employment, that greater prominence should be given to the results from the existing quarterly LFS. ONS will be developing proposals for enhancing the dissemination strategy used for the survey in order to achieve this aim.
Further details are set out in the Government's response to the Employment Committee's report sent earlier to its successor, the Education and Employment Committee.