The statistics authority

Official statistics carry a designation. What that designation does — and what it does not — is worth knowing before you use the figure.

What the label means

In the United Kingdom, the UK Statistics Authority is the independent body that oversees official statistics produced by government departments and their agencies. It was established by the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and operates at arm's length from ministers. Its regulatory function is exercised through the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), which assesses statistical outputs against the Code of Practice for Statistics.

The Code has three pillars — trustworthiness, quality and value — and producers who meet its standards can apply for, or be awarded, National Statistics designation. That designation signals that the output has been assessed and found to comply. It is a statement about process and transparency, not a guarantee that the underlying concept is measured in the right way or that the figure answers the question a reader is actually asking.

Disability statistics sit across several of those designated outputs. The Annual Population Survey feeds the disability employment figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions; the Family Resources Survey underpins benefit receipt and poverty analysis; the Census, conducted by the Office for National Statistics, carries its own near-universal coverage. Each is official. Each rests on a different question, a different sample frame and a different definition of disability — distinctions that the National Statistics label does not resolve.

The OSR can and does publish assessments, letters and regulatory judgements when it finds that a statistical release falls short, or when it has concerns about how figures are presented or communicated by ministers. Those interventions are public documents and are worth consulting alongside the bulletins themselves.

What official designation does not do is arbitrate between competing counts of the same population. When three definitions produce three different numbers, each rooted in a designated source, the label tells you the production standard. The analytical question is still yours to answer.