Authority Diary - July/August 2009
Following the Authority’s letter to the Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Rt. Hon. John Healey MP, in June, regarding the establishment of a national address register, the Chair of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee sent a letter to Mr. Healey in support of the Authority’s position. Sir Michael Scholar also wrote to Baroness Prosser, chair of the Women and Work Commission, following the presentation of statistics on the gender pay gap in a WWC report, and further to Sir Michael’s letter in June to the Minister of State for Women and Equality on the same subject. The correspondence is available on the Authority’s website under Reports and Correspondence > Correspondence.
Sir Michael, accompanied by the National Statistician, Karen Dunnell, visited statisticians working at the Health and Safety Executive in Bootle on 16 July. On 27 July, they visited the Ministry of Justice to meet with the Permanent Secretary, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, the head of profession for statistics and MoJ statisticians, to discuss the work of the Authority and issues of common interest.
The Authority published its Monitoring Report Migration Statistics: the way ahead on 9 July which reviewed progress in improving migration statistics. On 27 July, the Authority published its next six Assessment reports on Road Casualty Statistics (Department for Transport); UK Energy Sector Indicators (Department of Energy and Climate Change); Road Freight Statistics (Department for Transport); Prison Population Projections (Ministry of Justice); Migration Statistics (Office for National Statistics), and; Statistics on International Development and the ODA:GNI Ratio (Department for International Development). These are available on the website under Monitoring & Assessment > Assessment reports.
The Authority Board met in Newport on 17 July. At the meeting, the Board received a report on plans for the 2011 Census; discussed future funding settlements; and reviewed the six Assessment reports to be published later in the month. The Committee for Official Statistics also met on 9 July in London. The Committee discussed the future direction of the Statistics User Forum with Martin Dougherty, Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society; engagement between the Authority and the Government Statistical Service; criteria for the removal of National Statistics designation and proposed changes to the procedure leading up to the publication of Assessment reports; and reviewed the Committee’s business during 2008/09 and discussed possible items of future business for the year ahead.
The minutes and papers from the July Authority Board and Committee for Official Statistics will be published on the Authority website in due course. Minutes and papers of the June Authority Board and previous meetings of the Board are published on the website on the About the Authority > Board and committee documentation pages.
If you have any questions about the work of the UK Statistics Authority, or if you have any comments or issues that you want to raise with us, please email authority.enquiries@statistics.gov.uk, write to us at: Statistics House, Myddelton Street, London EC1R 1UW, or telephone our enquiry line on 0845 604 1857.
