Background
The Office for Statistics Regulation is keen to ensure statistics that relate to similar themes are readily accessible to users, able to answer the questions society needs to answer, and that there is a coherent narrative across sources. We see statistics as a public asset and want to maximise their value to users. Systemic reviews help us explore issues of public value and identify improvements that the statistics system may need to make. The Statistics Authority has had a long interest in improving migration statistics (see the summary of our activities since 2009 below for further information).
What we plan to do and why
Our goal is to support the drive for a more comprehensive production of international migration statistics, with orderly release, that in turn will increase the public value of, and confidence in, the statistics.
We were seeking to begin a systemic review of international migration statistics in early 2017 that would identify the barriers to delivering a more effective statistical system for migration in both the short and long terms. This would have involved convening a discussion on international migration statistics in late 2016 but we decided to wait since the Office for National Statistics has recently held a user consultation on this same agenda.
How we will do it
At present we have a watching brief on the producer’s consultation and are engaging on other pieces of work that are parts of the picture. We have conducted an Assessment into another migration data source – the Department for Work and Pension’s National Insurance numbers for adult overseas nationals. We are also examining the robustness of ONS’s student migration statistics from the International Passenger Survey and reviewing the Labour Force Survey employment estimates for non-UK participants in the UK labour market. We will publish reports on these investigations over the coming months, beginning with the Assessment Report which will be published shortly.
These activities reflect our wider, systemic perspective of migration statistics. They will inform a possible future user and producer engagement, as we consider the success of the statistical producers’ efforts to deliver a coherent approach to migration statistics.
Contact for more information on the migration systemic review:
Penny Babb penny.babb@statistics.gov.uk
Summary of regulatory activities since 2009
We have had a long interest and concern about migration statistics. We published a Monitoring Report, Migration Statistics: the Way Ahead? in July 2009, reporting on progress being made by ONS against previous reviews and the recommendations of a report from the House of Commons Treasury Committee Counting the population. The Monitoring Report also considered the adequacy of ONS’s plans for improving migration statistics and the effectiveness of co-operation across government in response to previous reviews.
We also published a Monitoring Review, The Robustness of the International Passenger Survey in June 2013, which concluded that IPS statistics were broadly sufficient to meet a range of user needs for migration statistics at the UK level, but that there was not sufficient robustness to meet needs for migration data at lower geographic levels.
As part of a wider programme of work considering statistics and their use within government, a Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) report, Migration Statistics, published in July 2013, identified a range of limitations in the use of LTIM statistics, particularly in measuring progress towards meeting the Government’s migration targets and in analysing migration statistics at lower level geographies. The report identified the e-Borders programme (now know as Exit Checks) as an opportunity for further developing the statistics and suggested that other approaches to data collection should be considered by ONS and the Home Office. A letter from the Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority to the Chairman of PASC addressed how statistics to meet these needs might be created.
With intense public debate on the subject of European national migration in the run up to the referendum on membership of the EU earlier this year, we again intervened, encouraging a cross-Departmental effort to provide the best possible data. We are currently finalising our assessment of the National Insurance numbers for adult overseas nationals statistics which have taken us into the terrain of the public value offered by these figures.
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