Legislative Background

Official statisticians in the UK have long relied on a patchwork of legislation giving them a mandate to collect data but, until recently, the constitutional and governance arrangements for the UK statistical system were organised on a non-statutory basis. Therefore the UK did not meet one of the main principles embodied in the United Nations' 'Fundamental Principles of Statistics'. In recognition of this, attempts were made in recent years to place these arrangements on a more formal footing by describing them in a series of non-statutory frameworks. These included the 'ONS Framework' (1996), the 'Framework for National Statistics' (2000), and more parochially, the 'Statistics Concordat', agreed between the UK Government and the Devolved Administrations in 2001.

The UK statistical system has now entered a new era. In November 2006, the government introduced statistical legislation to the UK Parliament - the 'Statistics and Registration Service Bill' - which embedded these earlier reforms in law by creating a new Statistics Authority, independent of Government, with overall responsibility for the production and assessment of statistics. After six months of scrutiny by Parliament, the 'Statistics and Registration Bill' received Royal Assent on 26 July 2007 and all of its provisions came into formal effect on 1 April 2008.

A copy of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and other documents which preceded and informed the drafting of the Statistics Act can be found at 'Key legislative documents'.