§ Lynne JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether Ministers or officials have made representations to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding the omission of figures relating to greenhouse gas emissions from air and freight transport from ONS reports; and if he will make a statement. [177231]
§ Mr. McNultyMinisters have made no representations to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding the content of their reports. The content of ONS reports is a matter for ONS on which they alone take the final decision after consultation as appropriate. The Department for Transport (DfT) is involved in the quality assurance process for some ONS reports, which involves discussion at official level. The quality assurance process may identify data quality or methodological issues that lead to ONS changing their reports.
As part of the quality assurance process, DfT officials contacted ONS seeking clarifications on the methodology used to produce the figures on GHG emissions in the Environmental Accounts published on 20 May. Subsequently, the DfT Head of Freight
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Directorate Headcount at 16 October 2002 Headcount at 31 March 2003 Headcount at 31 March 2004 Freight 21 23 21 Operations 126 134 135 Strategic planning 36 40 84 Technical 4 6 9 Finance and commercial 77 88 100 Deputy Chief Executive 30 31 46 Statistics informed ONS they were unable to reconcile the figures in the Environmental Accounts with DfT data on the road freight industry. In this case, DfT Statisticians were concerned about data quality and methodological issues. ONS agreed that further investigation was required. ONS has publicly made clear that: "The Office for National Statistics (ONS) alone took the decision on the final wording of the news release on the environmental accounts (report, 27 May 2004). There was no improper pressure from the Department for Transport or anywhere else. ONS could not satisfy itself fully on technical concerns over the reconciliation of figures on road freight emissions based on alternative definitions and hence decided that it would not be appropriate to focus upon transport emissions. There was nothing unusual about the process adopted on this occasion and it is completely wrong to suggest that the figures were "withdrawn" or "removed from the … report". The published datasets were not amended in any way and were published on the National Statistics website in their entirety."
Once the reconciliation work is completed it will be made publicly available.