On Tuesday 27 January, Mary Gregory, Executive Director for Population, Census and Social Statistics gave evidence to the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee’s inquiry into settlement, citizenship and integration.
A transcript of which has been published on the UK Parliament website.
Dear Baroness Taylor,
House of Lords Committee on Industry and Regulators – inquiry into regulators and growth
I welcome the opportunity to respond to the House of Lords Committee on Industry and Regulators’ inquiry into regulators and growth. While we do not have a role in making regulatory decisions directly related directly to growth, we believe that high quality statistics create the conditions for better decisions and more durable economic growth.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) provides independent regulation of all official statistics produced in the UK and aims to enhance public confidence in the core information which informs both policy and everyday decision-making. We do this by ensuring that official statistics meet the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics (Code).
The core principle of both our regulatory approach and the Code is that statistics should serve the public good. This means they should exist as public assets that provide insight that allows them to be used widely for informing understanding and shaping action. They should benefit society as a whole by addressing the issues which matter most in people’s lives and evolve as society and the economy change.
Our regulatory work safeguards trust in key economic statistics – such as GDP, productivity, labour market and inflation data – and ensures that decisions by government are based on credible and transparent evidence. Our recently published Systemic Review of the Office for National Statistics’s (ONS) Economic Statistics placed requirements on the ONS intended to strengthen confidence in some of its key outputs following well-publicised problems with quality. As well as safeguarding key economic indicators, we also regulate statistics that help business understand their local market conditions and inform their decision making on where to locate and provide new services – for example, our work on population estimates and sub-national economic statistics.
We are also reinforcing our regulatory influence on critical transformation projects such as the redevelopment of the Consumer Prices Index and the Labour Force Survey. These are pivotal to modernising the UK’s statistical system and ensuring its continued relevance, robustness and public trust. Confidence in statistics reduces uncertainty and helps to set the conditions for long-term investment, which is fundamental to sustainable growth.
Our Strategy for 2026-2029 emphasises ensuring statistics meet society’s evolving needs. In the context of growth, this includes our routine regulatory activity highlighting gaps and good practice in data on productivity, regional and sectoral performance, innovation, skills and the green economy. By encouraging statistics that better reflect user needs and value to the modern economy, OSR supports more effective targeting and evaluation of growth policies.
OSR promotes high standards in how statistics are used in public debate and policymaking. Challenging misuse of economic data, encouraging clarity about uncertainty, and supporting good analytical practice all help ensure that growth policies are grounded in evidence rather than misleading presentations of statistics. We also seek to ensure that statistics serve the public good by enabling Parliament, the media and public to scrutinise policy.
In summary, consistent with our new strategy, OSR helps to support understanding of the Government’s growth agenda not by advocating specific policies, but by strengthening the quality, relevance and use of key official statistics, especially relating to the economy. This independent role creates the conditions for better decisions and more durable economic growth.
Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR
On Thursday 26 June 2025, Jen Woolford, Director for Public Policy Analysis gave oral evidence to the Lords Social Mobility Policy Committee for their inquiry into social mobility policy.
A transcript of the session is available on the UK Parliament website.
Dear Lord Wood,
Thank you for inviting me to give evidence for the Committee’s inquiry on Preparing for an Ageing Society. During that session on 1 April, I promised to follow-up with the Committee on several topics, as our discussion ranged from population projections to fertility rates and migration. I have annexed further information on, specifically:
I hope this is helpful, and please do let me know if you or the Committee have any further questions that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) can help with.
Yours sincerely,
Mary Gregory
Director for Population Statistics, Office for National Statistics
The national population projections give an indication of the potential future population size of the UK and its constituent countries. These statistics are widely used in planning, including fiscal projections, health, education and pensions. National population projections are not forecasts and do not attempt to predict potential changes in international migration. Migration assumptions do not directly account for recent and future policy or economic changes. Demographic assumptions for future fertility, mortality and migration are based on observed demographic trends.
The ONS publish population projections of the future size and age structure of the population of the UK and its constituent countries. The 2022 based National population projections show an old age dependency ratio of 278 people above pension age to every 1,000 people aged 16 to pension age.
State pension age is planned to be raised from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028. Based on ONS population projections, to hold the current old age dependency ratio of 278 constant, pension age would need to rise to 68 in the first half of the 2030s, 69 in the second half of the 2030s, and 70 in the 2040s.
The ONS has published methodology on comparing national population projections to mid-year population estimates from 1971 to 2022 with population estimates, births, long-term international migration, and deaths, including measures of error. This helps users understand the uncertainty inherent in population projections, where this has come from in our previous releases and for them to make judgements on the potential uncertainty in our latest projections. We have published similar reports on a decennial basis in the past following the reconciliation and rebasing of population estimates.
Figure 1 show that projections from 2006-based onwards generally follow the estimated population increase closely.
Figure 1: Total population estimates compared with projections by UK country, 1971-based to 2022-based projections
Source: mid-year population estimates and national population projections from the Office for National Statistics
We produce assumptions for future levels of migration by reviewing what has happened in the past and modelling plausible future scenarios. We consult with a panel of independent academic experts working in the field of demography to discuss the possible forces that may influence future demographic behaviour.
The migration assumptions are not a forecast or prediction of future migration levels; they should be interpreted as a potential scenario in which future net international migration averages at a certain level.
There has been substantial change in international migration over recent years. This has been reflected in the changing patterns of age and sex profiles of international immigration and emigration. The migration component within the National Population Projections system has become larger over recent projections, as the long-term assumption has increased.
We used a 10-year average of international migration (for the 10 years ending mid-2023) to set the principal long-term international migration assumption. Four variant projections have been produced to show what might happen to the UK population if international migration is higher, lower, if there is a faster decline in net migration based on the types of migration over recent years, and if there is no international or internal migration (from the base year); these are all compared with the principal assumption.
Migration assumptions are initially set at an aggregate level for inflows and outflows. Single year of age and sex distributions are then generated and are applied to the assumed aggregate totals, using data from the five years prior to the projections base.
Our latest publication on childbearing for women born in different years, England and Wales: 2023, was released on 2 April, and shows the changing composition of families over time, comparing the fertility of women of the same age and the number of children they have had. The focus is on the fertility patterns of women born in 1978 and compare them with past and projected future generations; this is the most recent cohort for which we have observed completed family size data. For the first time ever, we have published fertility rates using data from the 2022-based national population projections (NPPs) principal projection for England and Wales.
Women in England and Wales who were born in 1978 have an average completed family size of 1.95 children, which is the highest average since women born in 1961; however, this is a lower average when compared with 2.04 children for their mothers’ generation (assumed to be those born in 1951).
Women born in 2007 (now 18 and considered to be the daughters of those born in 1978) are projected to have smaller families than their mothers, with an average completed family size of 1.52 children; this estimate uses the 2022-based principal national population projections.
In October 2024, the ONS published an article looking at how the fertility rate is changing in England and Wales, which highlights that babies are increasingly being born to older mothers. One possible element contributing to this is the rise in participation in higher education, particularly for women. For example, higher education percentage in England by age 25 for females was 54.9% for 2022/23. Putting that in context of the time series, the latest cohort we can report participation by age 25 for is the 15-year-olds from 2012/13, and for this cohort CHEP-25 was 49.0%, an increase of 10.2 percentage points compared to the 2001/02 cohort.
In our article “Milestones: journeying through modern life”, we reference that women start full-time work later than men, with a potential reason being that more women participate in higher education than men. In the most recent figures, 80.2% of women aged 25-34 in the UK were employed (compared to 87.8% of men). Many milestones, such as moving out of the family home, getting married for the first time and buying a home, are happening later in life compared to 2011 or before.
As discussed at the session, the ONS has not completed work on how far these socio-economic factors, such as inability to buy or rent a property until later in life, impact the fertility rate. However, you may be interested to consider academic literature on the topic, such as the positive correlation between education and fertility intentions in Europe (2014) and the recent decline in period fertility in England and Wales(2022).
The ONS publish an analysis of population estimates tool for the UK, allowing users to examine the components of change and view the longer-term impact of different levels of migration on age distribution.
Reviewing the time period since the UK left the EU (implemented from 31 January 2020) (noting this period covers changes to migration during the pandemic), it shows that the higher levels of net international migration in the year to mid-2022 and mid-2023 appear to have stalled the rise in median age. In the long run, with net inward migration, all remaining migrants age. Figure 2 details the age distribution as a percentage of England and Wales population for net international migration for 2023.
Figure 2: International migrants as a % of total population, by age, for England and Wales
Source: Office for National Statistics
The ONS has published estimates of the population of England and Wales by country of birth and passports held based on data from Census 2021. This data can be interrogated by age, sex and geography in the Census 2021 Custom Dataset Tool and in the Census 2021 Maps interactive data.
Figure 3 shows country of birth by age for England and Wales. It shows that the greatest numbers of non-UK born are in the working ages. In the peak working ages of 20-49, just over one in four people were born outside the UK. It is also worth noting the sizeable numbers approaching pension age. Many of the young children will be born to migrants. In 2023, 37.3% of live births were to parents where either one or both were born outside the UK, an increase from 35.8% in 2022.
Since Census 2021, there has been net migration of about 1.5m. Our latest estimate of the population of England and Wales was the year ending June 2023 and includes 11,439,000 non-UK-born people; of which EU-born was 3,395,000 and non-EU-born was 8,044,000.
Figure 3: Age distribution by country of birth and sex, England and Wales
Source: Census 2021 custom table builder, ONS
The Department for Work and Pensions uses ONS data to publish statistics on the economic labour market status of individuals aged 50 and over by five-year age bands and gender. Their latest release was in September 2024, using April-June 2024 data.
In that release, they concluded that from 2019 to 2023, the employment rate of older adults decreased each year from a record high in 2019 of 72.5% to 70.7%. The inactivity rate in 2024 for those aged 50 to 64 continues to remain higher than the pre-pandemic rate, which was 25.5% in 2019. Moreover, the economic inactivity rate for women aged 50 to 64 remains statistically significantly higher, at 31.3% in 2024, when compared to men of the same age (23.2%).
As discussed during the session, there is no clear evidence as to whether older workers are more productive. Age can be a proxy for work experience, where older workers might be more productive because of their greater experience. However, younger workers are typically considered more dynamic. This might lead to better matching between workers and jobs, which could improve productivity.
The ONS is in the early stages of developing a Linked Employer-Employee Dataset (LEED) that will allow researchers to improve our understanding of how workers move between firms throughout their lives, and the relationships between employee and firm-level outcomes such as wages and productivity. We will keep the Committee updated as this work progresses.
Office for National Statistics
May 2025
On Tuesday 1 April, Mary Gregory, Director for Population Statistics, gave oral evidence to the Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee for their inquiry, ‘Preparing for an Ageing Society’. A transcript of which has been published on the UK Parliament website.
On Monday 17 March, Grant Fitzner, Director of Macroeconomic and Environmental Statistics and Analysis at the Office for National Statistics gave evidence to the Home-based Working Committee for their session on the social and economic impacts of working from home.
A transcript of which has been published on the UK Parliament website.
Dear Lord Bridges,
Firstly, David and I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to discuss labour market statistics with the Committee on 23 April. During the session we promised to follow-up on several areas of interest to the Committee.
How household composition has changed since before COVID-19
During our discussion, we said that we would revert with further information we have on how household composition has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was in response to a point raised by Lord Blackwell who asked if there is any evidence that more young people are living at home with their parents since the start of the pandemic.
The ONS produces a report called Families and Households in the UK. This release includes tables looking at the prevalence of different types of households, including the number of households with dependent children and households that have non-dependent children only. This report does not show a significant change in the mix of households by type or size since the start of the pandemic. There has been a recent change in family type between couples being married or not married when there are no dependent children in the family, with unmarried cohabiting couples slowly on the increase when there are no dependent children. However, this does not affect the household composition relating to non-dependent children. Longer term trends can also be found in analysis comparing the 2021 Census with the 2011 Census.
Economic inactivity in Scotland
Whilst discussing how inactivity varied between the nations of the UK, Baroness Liddell asked for some further information on the economic inactivity picture in Scotland specifically.
The ONS publishes information on the comparative labour market situation in each of the regions and countries of the UK in its monthly report, Labour market in the regions of the UK. The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 years in Scotland who are economically inactive, tends to be one or two percentage points higher than the UK average, but generally moves in the same ways.
Of those who are economically inactive, Scotland tends to have a higher proportion than the UK of those who consider their main reason for inactivity to be long-term sickness or disability. Conversely, Scotland tends to have a lower proportion economically inactive because they are looking after the family or home. Scotland also has a higher proportion of the economically inactive who consider themselves to be retired. Scotland also has a lower proportion of men who are economically inactive due to being students than the UK as a whole, although the proportion of women is comparable.
International comparisons of economic inactivity
Baroness Wolf raised whether the United Kingdom could be considered an “international outlier” when it comes to economic inactivity. I wanted to provide some further detail on this point.
Even though the UK maintained relatively strong employment throughout the pandemic, the UK is the only country within the G7 with employment rates below pre-pandemic levels and economic inactivity rates above pre-pandemic levels.
The economic inactivity rates for France, Germany and Italy are well below pre-pandemic levels as well as those of Canada and the US. Further information is contained in the annex to this letter.
Please do let us know if any other questions, and if we can help the Committee further on either this topic or any of its other inquiries.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Keoghan
Deputy National Statistician for Economic, Social and Environmental Statistics
ANNEX
International Summary
The UK maintains relatively strong employment within the G7 and all countries in the OECD dataset throughout 2021 and 2022. However, the UK remains the only G7 country with employment rates still below pre-pandemic levels (down 1.1%).
While the UK has seen unemployment rates above pre-pandemic levels for prolonged periods, it is now largely unchanged compared with pre-pandemic levels. Recently, the UK had seen the highest rise in unemployment since before the pandemic out of the G7 countries, however now we are down in 4th, with Japan, the United States and Canada all above their pre-pandemic levels. The other G7 countries are below their pre-pandemic unemployment rates.
Pre-pandemic, the UK had relatively low economic inactivity rates compared with other countries. It is now the only G7 country where the economic inactivity rate is still above pre-pandemic levels (1.1 percentage points above pre-pandemic rates).
Looking at it more broadly, the OECD members collectively have generally seen a growth in employment rate, and a decrease in unemployment and inactivity rates since the pandemic; with the UK performing in mostly the opposite direction to its fellow members.
OECD employment, unemployment and economic inactivity rates
| Employment | Unemployment | Economic Inactivity | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | Pre-pandemic rate (Q4 2019) | Q1 2024* | Change | Pre-pandemic Rate (Q4 2019) | Q1 2024* | Change | Pre-pandemic Rate (Q4 2019) | Q1 2024* | Change |
| Canada | 74.6 | 75.0 | 0.5 | 5.7 | 5.9 | 0.2 | 20.8 | 20.0* | -0.8 |
| France | 66.7 | 68.3* | 1.6 | 8.2 | 7.5* | -0.7 | 27.3 | 26.0 | -1.3 |
| Germany | 75.8 | 77.3* | 1.6 | 3.2 | 3.1* | -0.1 | 22.1 | 20.1* | -1.9 |
| Italy | 59.0 | 62.1* | 3.1 | 9.6 | 7.3* | -2.3 | 34.6 | 32.9* | -1.7 |
| Japan | 78.1 | 79.1 | 1.0 | 2.3 | 2.5 | 0.2 | 20.0 | 18.7 | -1.3 |
| United Kingdom | 76.1 | 75.0* | -1.1 | 3.9 | 3.8* | 0.0 | 20.8 | 21.9* | 1.1 |
| United States | 71.7 | 72.0 | 0.3 | 3.6 | 3.8 | 0.2 | 25.6 | 25.1 | -0.5 |
| EU Average | 68.0 | 70.6* | 2.6 | 6.6 | 6.0* | -0.6 | 27.0 | 24.8* | -2.3 |
*Where Q1 2024 figures are unavailable, Q4 2023 figures have been used.
For comparability UK data shown here are sourced from the OECD and may differ from ONS published data as OECD do their own seasonal adjustment
Data are sourced from OECD – Employment is 15-64 (UK/USA is 16-64) and Unemployment is 15+ (UK/USA is 16+)
Dear Lord Bridges,
When giving evidence to you and your Committee on 18 April, Grant and I promised to follow-up on a number of points with various members of the Committee.
Firstly, we promised to send the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and OECD joint study, International comparisons of the measurement of non-market output during the COVID-19 pandemic, which compared methodologies used by national statistical institutes; and Lord King also asked if we could share our Public service productivity, healthcare, England bulletin.
You asked if we were able to conduct a comparison of other countries that do use the direct measurement approach for healthcare and how they fared during the pandemic. The following charts relate to international comparisons of countries that use the direct volume output measurement approach to healthcare: the use of activity data.
International comparisons of healthcare specifically are limited partly as many countries do not publish data by individual industries such as healthcare. Figure 1 shows the Gross Value Added (GVA) of a broader group of industries: human health, education and public administration. This industry grouping is reported to the OECD and so available for a wider group of countries. Only countries that measure health care on a direct volume output basis are included in Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows a greater fall in the UK than other countries in these three industries combined. This will partly be due to differences in the measurement and output of education services over the pandemic, but healthcare will also be a factor. Gross value added for healthcare for the UK is in part supressed because of the large increase in intermediate consumption – the goods and services used as inputs, such as personal protective equipment. While the GVA of healthcare is now lower than it was before the pandemic, the ONS measures of the volume output of government in healthcare show this to be higher than before the pandemic.
Figure 1: Gross value added from health care, education and public administration combined for countries that use the direct volume output method for health care
Source: Office for National Statistics For a more accessible version, please visit our accessibility policy.
Figure 2 shows the output of government services provided to individuals (such as healthcare and education) unadjusted for intermediate consumption. Again, this measure is an imperfect comparison, particularly as the proportion of healthcare that is government-funded varies greatly between countries. However, for the UK, the coverage of this measure and the three industries included in Figure 1 substantially overlap. Figure 2 shows less of a difference between the UK and other countries, with the total output of government-funded services at a similar level to before the pandemic for the UK.
Figure 2: Individual consumption expenditure of general government, chained volume estimates for countries that use the direct volume output method for health care
Source: Office for National Statistics For a more accessible version, please visit our accessibility policy.
In addition, while discussing healthcare, Lord Davies asked if we ensure that the two sets of figures between private and public provision make sense. For healthcare, we have separate data sources for public and private provision, and for private provision we collect data via a survey where respondents can add comments. For example, during the recent nurses’ strike, there were stronger numbers for the private healthcare section which made reference to increased numbers of people deciding to attend private healthcare. Ultimately, if public healthcare provision is doing well, with good outcomes and short waiting lists, then people have less incentive to use private provision and there is only a finite amount of healthcare needed so the two will offset each other to some degree.
Lord Rooker discussed life expectancy, specifically if has stalled for the first time in 120 years and whether this has had an impact on business (particularly the funeral industry). We agree that in the most recent period of 2018-20, compared with 2015-17, male life expectancy at birth was 7 weeks shorter and for females there was almost no change. Since 2010-12 life expectancy has grown by 0.3 years for males and females, compared with an increase of 2.5 years for males and 1.7 years for females between 2000-02 and 2008-10.
In terms of the impact on the funeral industry, funeral care is included within a more general heading of ‘other personal care’, so the data are not separately identified. As this industry includes hairdressers (who were severely impacted by the pandemic) we did not see large growth overall.
While discussing measurement of the digital economy, you asked how other countries gather statistics on how people spend their time. The UK is particularly active in the UN-led process around updating the System of National Accounts (SNA) in the area of digitalisation and the treatment of free digital products as described by Lord King in his example. UK officials led, with the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the development of guidance on how to treat free digital products in a satellite account, potentially as part of the unpaid work satellite account and were recently asked to take on the lead editorship of a manual providing guidance to national statistics institutes on the correct treatment of these products, recognising that the production costs and income derived from their production is already included in the national accounts.
The UK also chairs the development of guidance on the treatment of unpaid household service work with the SNA. Within those guidance notes recommendations is a proposition to include the time spent in paid work, unpaid work and leisure time within a supplementary table. This would then allow users to better consider factors like leisure time which have an impact on personal well-being when also evaluating changes in the value of the economy, while including or excluding the value of unpaid household services in their appraisals. We hope that the next SNA will therefore allow a better understanding of how households are experiencing their time, while also complementing existing measures of GDP with more complete measures of output including more traditional unpaid household services, and those which are digitally mediated, as captured by the new UK Time Use Survey.
The ONS ran a pilot online Time Use Survey in March 2020 which has since evolved over five successive surveys, with the latest undertaken in March 2023. The survey not only records all the activities carried out in a respondent’s day, but also captures how much they enjoyed the activities and the extent to which they were using smart devices to engage in them.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, time use analyses produced by the ONS throughout 2020 to 2022 were focused on meeting policy interests in how the public were spending their time and changing behaviours during periods of lockdown and periods where restrictions were eased.
However, moving on from the pandemic, we are now refocused on using this source in measuring the digital economy, and are reviewing existing methodologies for the measurement of unpaid household production activities (as outlined in the UNECE Guide on Valuing Unpaid Household Service Work), including those used in compiling the UK Household Satellite Accounts, last published in 2018. We endeavour to produce new estimates up to 2020 during summer 2023 and then aim to start developing new methods utilising the time use data collected since 2020 for more recent years immediately afterwards.
From 2023/24 onwards, the Time Use Survey will be run twice per year as part of the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), and we will be collaborating with academic experts in producing new experimental estimates of unpaid household production work, with an ambition to produce quarterly estimates in the future which would coincide with quarterly GDP estimates.
Finally, Lord Turnbull asked for information directly after the session on a) what proportion of health and education sector are non-market outputs, and b) how treated GPs, including those working in the NHS – i.e. private sector or non-market healthcare output, and c) likewise for dentists. In the Blue Book 2022, we provide rounded figures of the splits for health, social care and education: health is split 85/15 public/private, social care is 50/50 public/private (we publish human health and social care) and education is 69/8/23 public/private/other (this includes higher and further education). If there is market activity (i.e. private sector activity within our health data) we treat this as a P11 transaction, which is classed as market output and is deducted from our final consumption exemption figure for Government output. This would apply for GPs and dentists.
Please do let us know if any other questions, and if we can help the Committee further on either this topic or any of its other inquiries.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Keoghan
Deputy National Statistician for Economic, Social and Environmental Statistics
On Tuesday 18 April, Mike Keoghan, Deputy National Statistician for Economic, Social and Environmental Statistics and Grant Fitzner, Chief Economist and Director for Macroeconomic and Environment Statistics and Analysis at the Office for National Statistics, gave evidence to the Lords Economic Affairs Committee for a one-off session on growth and productivity: statistical growth.
A transcript of which has been published on the UK Parliament website.
Dear Lord Bridges,
I write following the Economic Affairs Committee’s report, ‘Where have all the workers gone?’, particularly the conclusion that “more timely high-quality information on the wealth holdings of early retirees, such as that which will ultimately be available through the Wealth Assets Survey or the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, would be very helpful in assessing the financial resilience of people who have recently retired. (Paragraph 84)”
As the Committee is aware, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces a range of statistics showing the income, spending and wealth of British households. These statistics are primarily based on three household surveys, through which 25,000 households are asked about the income they receive (including earnings from work and income from benefits), the money they spend and the assets they own, such as property and pensions. These statistics are a vital source of information for policymaker’s understanding people’s financial well-being, including the effects from the rising cost of living.
We believe that by combining the current surveys into a single survey in conjunction with alternative data sources it will be possible to deliver higher quality, more timely and in-depth analysis of households’ financial well-being. With this in mind, we are holding a consultation that seeks feedback from users on:
Depending on the outcome of the consultation, we plan to test and roll out the newly combined survey with its various modules over the next three years. Our aim is to ensure that the household financial statistics and analysis we produce continue to meet the evolving needs of policy makers, citizens and other data users, and your conclusion illustrates that we are right to consult on this topic. Our goal is that our statistics and analysis should provide inclusive, coherent, timely and granular insights into wide aspects of the financial wellbeing of households with improved coverage and accuracy.
We also have a longer-term aim to make much greater use of other existing UK Government data sources, known as administrative data. Our ambition is to put these at the heart of our income statistics, supported by data from our surveys, which continue to be fundamental for measuring aspects of household finances not covered in other sources. This proposed approach essentially constitutes a shift from predominantly survey-based estimates supported by administrative data to the converse position. This aligns with our broader plans and ambitions for population and social statistics and the Government Statistical Service (GSS) work programme on the coherence of income and earnings.
We would be happy to keep the Committee regularly updated on this work.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Keoghan
