Statistics watchdog wants power to decide when its rules apply

In January, after extensive flooding in the UK, Hugh Bayley MP raised concerns about government figures used in the debate on flood spending. We factchecked these claims at the time.

In its response the UK Statistics Authority pointed out that the Department:  "does not publish figures on flood defence spending as official statistics. There is therefore no obligation for [the Department] to comply with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics in relation to these figures."

It's a quirk of the system that even when figures are published by a government department there can still be debate about whether they count as 'official statistics' and are subject to the Statistics Authority's Code of Practice.

Today in response to a further letter from Mr Bayley, the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority has called for that weakness to be removed, saying: "there are strong arguments for the Authority to be given responsibility for determining the scope of the definition of 'official statistics'."

Full Fact called for a clearer and more independent process for identifying official statistics in our oral evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee last year (Q58).