Economy

Economic statistics are central to monitoring, understanding and managing the economy, at both national and regional levels. The Economy theme covers statistics which measure different aspects of, and provide insight into, the UK economy and the economies of Devolved Administrations and UK regions.

Access to statistics that are accurate, reliable, relevant and timely is vital for policy makers. And such statistics are equally important for effective decision making in the private sector. Moreover, economic statistics provide a yardstick for assessing economic performance and are thus central to the ability of Parliaments, the media and the public at large to hold policy makers to account.

It is also crucial that information is available below the level of the aggregate economy. For instance, effective regional policies require information about economic activity at the level of the corresponding regional units.

In 2016, Sir Charles Bean in his independent review report into UK economic statistics said that the current economic statistics were showing their age having been designed over fifty years ago when the economy was dominated by goods not services. He called for greater scrutiny following his finding that many economic statistics are deficient.

Fulfilling the Bean review expectations, during 2019 among other work, we commenced a review of HMRC statistical quality management (published in April 2020), published a review of the public value of devolved public finance statistics and assessed DCMS sector economic estimates and designated the statistics with the National Statistics designation.

Contact: Iain Russell