Who's responsible for scrutinizing our official statistics?

The government has announced a review into the way Britain's economic statistics are produced. One proposal doing the rounds is that the Treasury should assume responsibility for the quality of official figures in order to make production "answerable to parliament".

Political will to improve the quality of official statistics is welcome—over the past five years, Full Fact has worked with government statisticians, MPs and the UK statistics watchdog to do just that.

However, the production of official statistics is already answerable to parliament, in the form of the UK Statistics Authority. The Authority is an independent regulator that scrutinizes the way official statistics are created and released. It also challenges misuse of official figures by senior politicians—for example the Chancellor's inappropriate use of unpublished Treasury analysis during the election or the Labour party's incorrect claims about zero hours contracts.

In turn, the Authority's work is regularly scrutinised by MPs (from different parties) who sit on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. We set out these facts in a letter published in the Financial Times this week.

When we talk to factcheckers and journalists around the world, it is clear that our independent regulator is seen as an integral part of our gold standard democracy. This inquiry could strengthen that role and official statistics generally. We hope it will not instead put that independence at risk.