House of Commons

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Karin Smyth MP – NHS waiting lists

Dear Ms Smyth,

Thank you for your letter of 10 May regarding a statement made by the Secretary of State for Health, the Rt Hon Victoria Atkins MP, who said “we’ve cut waiting lists for five months in a row”. This was made in a video posted by the Department of Health and Social Care on X on 20 April. You raised a concern that this statement appeared to overlook a change to the data collection.

The guidance on the recording and reporting of Referral to Treatment (RTT) data was updated on 2 February 2024 to say that community service pathways should, from February 2024, no longer be reported in RTT datasets and should instead be captured in community health services data collections. These changes were announced appropriately by NHS England, with the estimated impact published in an ad-hoc management information excel file. The Referral to Treatment (RTT) statistics for 2023/24 clearly indicate a break in the data series, with a dotted line appropriately separating out February and March 2024, where the changes to submitted data started.

In the statistics release, NHS England estimated that the discontinuity between January and February 2024 was ‘around 36,000’. As the reported waiting list decreased by 36,198 between end-January and end-February, this results in a small decrease of around 198 once the discontinuity is taken into account. This followed falls in each of the four months from end-September to end-January. The Secretary of State’s statement was supported by the data, but greater transparency around the discontinuity in the time period being referred to would have better supported understanding.

Yours sincerely,
Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Sarah Olney MP – statements on tax burden

Dear Ms Olney,

Thank you for your letter regarding statements by the Chancellor about changes in the tax burden. Specifically, you expressed concern that:

During his budget speech on 6 March, the Chancellor said “Today, in contrast, a Conservative Government brings down taxes”.
On 7 March, during an interview with BBC Radio Scotland, the Chancellor said Scotland “is the only part of the United Kingdom that is raising taxes”.

HM Treasury has informed us that the claims made in the budget speech were made in relation to the Spring Budget document that states,

“Together, this Spring Budget and Autumn Statement 2023 deliver a total tax cut of £20 billion for workers, the largest ever cut to employee and self-employed National Insurance Contributions (NICs), as well as making full expensing permanent – with the combined impact of government policy from Autumn Statement 2022 reducing the tax burden by 0.6 percentage points”.

In the Spring Budget document, this paragraph is clearly sourced as the combined size of Spring Budget 2023, Autumn Statement 2023, and Spring Budget 2024 tax measures in 2028/29 as a percentage of GDP, using data from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) policy measures database and the OBR public finances databank, to combine the effects from several policies at multiple fiscal events.

As you have pointed out, the OBR has also forecast that the cuts to national insurance rates will be offset by other policy decisions such as freezing national insurance and income tax thresholds. In my previous letter to you, dated 19 December 2023, I noted that intelligent transparency demands that ministers consider how someone with an interest, but little specialist knowledge, is likely to understand what they say. The average person would be likely to interpret the Chancellors’ claim to “bring down taxes” as referring to the overall tax burden.

Regarding the claims made by the Chancellor on BBC Radio Scotland, Scotland has introduced a new ‘Advanced Rate’ leading to increased tax payments for individuals earning over £75,000. However, the claim that Scotland is the only part of the United Kingdom raising taxes lacks the context of threshold freezes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

HM Treasury officials were unable to provide us with a source for this claim about Scottish taxes and did not clarify its intended meaning.

Demonstrating transparency and analytical integrity builds public confidence in how analytical evidence is used across government. The Office for Statistics Regulation is continuing to work with government departments, including HM Treasury, to embed the principles of intelligent transparency as the default approach to communicating statistics and data.

Yours sincerely,
Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Jess Phillips MP – statements on crime

Dear Ms Phillips,

Thank you for your letter of 24 April regarding the use of crime statistics by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and the Home Office. You asked us to investigate the following statements about changes in the level of crime since 2010:

“Since 2010, violent crime is down 51%. Neighbourhood crime is down 48%.”
“Thanks to our record and plan, violent crime has fallen by 50%.”

These estimates of violent and neighbourhood crime come from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) headline estimates, reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The CSEW remains the best estimate of long-term trends in crimes against the household population for the crimes included in the survey.

The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Home Office used the most appropriate data source for comparing trends in violent crime and neighbourhood crime since 2010. Nevertheless, it would support public understanding if they had been explicit in stating which offences are excluded from the violent crime estimates.

As you note, the CSEW headline estimate of violent crime incidents does not include all violent crimes. Almost all sexual offences, and all harassment and stalking offences, are not included due to the under-reporting of these crimes in face-to-face interviews and the difficulties of measuring the number of incidents that have occurred. The ONS’s preferred measure for this subset of violent crime types is the prevalence rate – the proportion of the population who have experienced such victimisation. This is estimated using data collected through separate standalone survey modules, with higher reporting rates, from those used to produce the CSEW headline estimates referred to above.

ONS’s Crime in England and Wales bulletin includes clear and prominent caveats about which crime types are excluded from the CSEW headline estimates. The ONS has also published an article titled ‘Crime trends in England and Wales and how we measure them’, which sets out how it measures crime, and which measure is best for which crime types.

Yours sincerely,
Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Karin Smyth MP to Sir Robert Chote – NHS waiting lists

Dear Sir Robert,

I am writing to you in my capacity as Shadow Health Minister, to query claims made by the Department of Health & Social Care with reference to NHS waiting list data.

In a video published to the Department of Health & Social Care’s social media accounts on 20 April, the Secretary of State stated that “we’ve cut waiting lists for five months in a row”. This claim was latterly repeated by other Health Ministers.

However, in the statistical release of RTT waiting time data published by NHSE in April, the recording of these figures was altered. The release stated that community service pathways would “no longer be reported in the RTT datasets”, and instead be captured in community health services data collections. According to the statistical release, this constituted “about 36,000 of those pathways” being excluded from February figures.

Given the reported fall in the waiting list from January to February in the RTT dataset was 36,198 – equal to the number of community service pathways removed from the figures – it appears that the claimed ‘cut’ in the waiting list could merely account for a change in the reporting method, rather than a material difference in the number of patients on incomplete pathways.

I wrote to the Department to query this matter, but their response failed to provide clarity on the data. I have attached both my letter and their reply to this email.

Can you therefore please confirm, as is my understanding, that the Secretary of State’s claim that waiting lists fell from January to February misrepresents the data? The drop in figures appears to simply reflect a change in reporting methods, rather than an actual fall in the number of patients on NHS waiting lists – as the public would understand it.

Yours sincerely,
Karin Smyth
Shadow Health Minister
Labour MP for Bristol South

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Sir Michael Ellis MP and Andrew Percy MP – Gaza statistics

Dear Sir Michael and Mr Percy,

Thank you for your letter of 25 March regarding the UK Government’s and the Opposition’s use of casualty statistics produced by the Gaza Ministry of Health related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. You raised concerns about the accuracy of the figures produced by the Gaza Ministry of Health and the UK Government’s reliance on these figures to calculate the provision of aid to Gaza.

As you will appreciate, it is beyond our remit and our capability to assess the accuracy of casualty statistics in an overseas conflict. Tracking the number of fatalities is challenging in any conflict and there are often inaccuracies and inconsistencies in real-time reporting. There is always the potential for numbers emerging from a conflict situation to be contested, and for there to be suspicions that they reflect a particular narrative.

Given these uncertainties and potential sources of bias, it would be desirable for Ministers, Shadow Ministers and other Parliamentarians to state the source of any estimates they use in the public domain and to recognise the limitations attached to them.

As regards determining aid provision, the Leader of the House of Commons explained in the House of Commons on 21 March 2024 that the Government uses satellite imagery of building damage, information from humanitarian partners on the ground and data on living conditions as well as casualty estimates. Transparency around the information feeding into such judgements can help establish confidence in the robustness of the decisions taken; however, there are clearly obstacles to providing that for some sources in a conflict situation with lives at risk.

Yours sincerely,
Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Andrew Gwynne MP – social care funding

Dear Mr Gwynne,

Thank you for your letter to Sir Ian Diamond regarding comments made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 7 March, during an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. During this interview, the Chancellor said:

“On social care, in my first Autumn Statement I put up the budget by nearly 40 per cent, over £5 billion or nearly £5 billion.”

In September 2021, the Government announced plans for additional funding for social care totalling £5.4 billion over 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25. In Autumn Statement 2022, the Chancellor increased this by 39 per cent to up to £7.5 billion but, having delayed some of the reforms, said that the additional funding would comprise up to £2.8 billion in 2023-24 and up to £4.7 billion in 2024-25. Treasury officials told us that it was this uplift in 2024-25 that the Chancellor referred to as “nearly £5 billion”. The reference to an increase of “nearly 40 per cent” presumably referred to the increase in the size of the overall funding package.

In an ideal world, the Chancellor would have been clearer about exactly what budget he was referring to and the time periods he was comparing. That would certainly be my expectation in a prepared statement or speech, but such clarity is less easy to achieve in an off-the-cuff response to an interview question.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Jess Phillips MP to Sir Robert Chote – statements on crime

Dear Sir Robert,

I am writing to raise concerns about a lack of intelligent transparency in the use of crime statistics by the Home Secretary and Home Office on social media and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.

All have publicly drawn attention to long term falls in violent crime. The Home Secretary and Home Office have also pointed to falls in neighbourhood crime.

These statistics are accurate as defined. But those definitions omit crimes that affect women’s safety and those have not fallen (like sexual assault and stalking). Someone with little specialist knowledge might reasonably assume that, for example, sexual assault would be counted as a violent crime.

The communications from the Home Secretary and Home Office do not make these limitations clear.

The Home Office and Home Secretary each tweeted responding to the latest publication of crime statistics (25 Jan) citing the following statistic:

“Since 2010, violent crime is down 51%, Neighbourhood crime is down 48%.”

During PMQs on 20 March, the Prime Minister said

“Thanks to our record and plan, violent crime has fallen by 50%.”

“Violent crime” does not include indecent exposure, unwanted sexual touching and rape, which collectively are put in the separate category of “sexual offences”^[1]. It also leaves out stalking and harassment.

“Neighbourhood crime” is defined as vehicle related theft, domestic burglary, theft from the person (including pickpocketing) and robbery of personal property. Beating Crime Plan^[2]

The prevalence of sexual assault, including rape, is little changed from 2010, having fallen until about 2014 and risen since then. Stalking has risen since 2010. The Office for National Statistics are currently developing questionnaires on harassment.

Communications from government should highlight when they rely on a technical definition whose meaning differs substantially from that which a non-specialist might reasonably assume. This is especially important when the statistical trends are different for each of the available definitions.

I therefore ask that you investigate the Prime Minster’s and the Home Secretary’s and Home Office’s statements and offer your guidance on whether they meet the standards of intelligent transparency and whether they are misleading.

I look forward to your response on this matter.

Yours sincerely,
Jess Phillips MP
Birmingham Yardley

Footnotes

^[1] There is one violent crime with a sexual element: “wounding with sexual intent” that gets badged as a “violent” crime, but this accounts for a very small proportion of sexual or violent crime.
^[2] Home Office’s Beating Crime Plan, October 2021. It does not cover all forms of theft, leaving out bike theft and both “other theft of personal property” and “other household theft”.

Sir Michael Ellis MP and Andrew Percy MP to Sir Robert Chote – Gaza statistics

Dear Sir Robert,

We are writing to express my concern about the statistics used by official authorities in the UK relating to the casualty figures in the Israel/Gaza conflict.

All loss of life in a conflict is a tragedy and to be deeply regretted. It is of course important to recognise that, behind the statistics, every single instance of loss of life is an appalling tragedy for the loved ones, family and friends of the deceased. In a conflict where thousands are killed that is a human tragedy of appalling proportions and significant global impact.

It is therefore all the more important at a time of increased geopolitical tensions that His Majesty’s Government and its agencies are alert to the fact that, in an ongoing conflict, disinformation may be deliberately utilised to secure greater diplomatic and financial support for one of the combatants in the conflict.

This is especially so when information is sourced via a recognised terrorist organisation, proscribed as such in the United Kingdom. It is accepted that Hamas control the so-called ‘Health Ministry’ in Gaza, from which disinformation has regularly been disseminated, and the motivation of Hamas to inculcate hatred and terror against Jewish people and the State of Israel are well known and openly documented, even in their founding Charter. It is patently obvious that Hamas cannot be treated as a reliable source.

It is therefore of paramount importance that the media, Government and Opposition in the United Kingdom do not depend on this obviously unreliable propaganda source to parrot the unproven claims of one side in an ongoing conflict.

This is not just a political matter. It is a use of statistics relevant to the UK taxpayer, not only for reasons of propriety and the global reputation of the UK, and not even also for the wish to avoid an exacerbation of an already tense global crisis, but also because the figures are presumably used by UK authorities to help calculate the quantum of provisions and supplies sent by the UK Government, on behalf of the UK taxpayer, to the conflict zone.

Consequently, if the figures of persons injured, for example, have been dramatically exaggerated by the Hamas ‘Health Ministry’ then a greater amount of goods may be sent than is actually needed, which might then be misappropriated by malefactors, to be sold and the proceeds used to purchase items which may be utilised to sustain Hamas, an armed party to the conflict. It is clear from the evidence that aid to Hamas has been misappropriated in the past.

Earlier this month, a leading academic statistician, Professor Abraham Wyner, a Professor of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, an ‘Ivy League’ university whose business school is regularly ranked as one of the highest-rated Business schools in the world, calculated that the Hamas casualty figures are …”highly suggestive…[of]…a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality…”. His report was published in Tablet magazine on 7th March.

Professor Wyner wrote that the reported casualty rate from Hamas increases with “metronomical linearity “- a “regularity…[that]…is almost surely not real.” In other words – he assesses that the figures are far too uniform and have clearly been created to follow a precisely-increasing trajectory. The graph he uses in his report shows a highly unrealistic exponential increase with “strikingly little variation.”

The Professor continues in his Report that “Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real.”

For the full report please see: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers#

This issue was raised last week in the House of Commons with the Leader of the House, and Ms Mordaunt confirmed that “[the government] need to ensure that we have the most accurate data…” The Minister went on to say that they were collecting that data from other sources as well as Hamas, including satellite imagery.

However, in the circumstances outlined above we are concerned that the Government and Opposition are relying on inaccurate figures in a way which is injurious to the public discourse, at a time of inflamed tensions, and contrary to the UK national interest. My primary concern is that the maximum amount of aid can be sent by the UK to actually support the urgent needs of the Palestinian civilians within Gaza and not be misappropriated for nefarious purposes.

As the Statistics Authority in the UK, which has proven itself willing to criticise leading political figures over their use of statistics, including recently, we would be grateful for your assessment of the situation and we look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Michael Ellis
Member of Parliament for Northampton North

Andrew Percy
Member of Parliament for Brigg and Goole

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Karin Smyth MP – hospital beds

Dear Ms Smyth,

Thank you for your letter of 1 February regarding recent official communications from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England on the delivery of hospital beds this winter.

On 25 January, DHSC posted on X:

“We’ve hit our target for 5,000 extra permanent hospital beds across the country this winter to help patients receive care faster”

with an infographic stating “5,000 extra hospital beds delivered this winter.”

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Rt Hon Victoria Atkins MP reposted this, adding:

“I want faster, simpler, fairer health care for all our patients. That’s why we’ve delivered 5,000 extra beds this winter to help cut waiting lists”.

The NHS England Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Plan was published in January 2023. As part of this plan, the NHS committed to “5,000 new beds as part of the permanent bed base for next winter” which was later referred to as “5,000 more staffed, sustainable beds in 2023-24”.

NHS England told us that ‘permanent’ here refers to what are categorised in the statistics as ‘core’ beds. It monitored the growth in core beds internally using the UEC Daily Situation Reports from 2022-23 that contained the split of core and escalation beds, and tracked changes from the April 2022 position of 94,502 core beds (from which the original target was set), leading to a target of 99,500. However, the breakdown of core and escalation beds is not currently presented in the published statistics prior to 20 November 2023. This means that it is not possible for the public to verify progress against the NHS England or DHSC news statements using data for the 2022-23 series. It would support greater transparency for the 2022-23 series to be retrospectively updated to include this breakdown.

In July 2023, an NHS England press release expressed a slightly different target – with a slightly smaller number to be achieved by a slightly earlier date:

“With high levels of bed occupancy all year around, hospitals are putting more beds in place for patients and are on track to hit 5,000 additional ‘core’ permanent general and acute beds. Thanks to the efforts of the NHS, more than 99,000 core beds will be in place across the country by December 2023 – thousands more than last year, to boost resilience”.

Published statistics from the UEC Daily Situation Reports 2023-24 (in the chart below) show that the highest number of core beds on any given day in December was 98,673 on 14 December, slightly shy of the more recent target. The number of core beds then exceeded 99,000 for the first time on 8 January and the original target of 99,500 on 10 January. The average number of core beds over the seven days from 15 to 21 January 2024 – immediately prior to the DHSC post – was 99,750. So, strictly speaking, the original target was met ahead of schedule and the subsequent one a few days behind schedule. DHSC could have spelt this (and the definition of ‘permanent’ beds) out more exhaustively, but on balance its communications were reasonable and not materially misleading, notwithstanding the desirability of greater transparency as to the original target, as above.

Source: Urgent and Emergency Care Daily Situation Reports 2023-24

Yours sincerely,

Sir Robert Chote
Chair

Andrew Gwynne MP to Professor Sir Ian Diamond – social care funding

Dear Sir Ian,

I write concerning comments made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the morning of 7th March, during an interview on Good Morning Britain.

The Chancellor said: “By the way on social care, in my first autumn statement I put up the budget by nearly 40%, nearly £5 billion.”

I wish to raise concerns about the accuracy of this statement, which would appear to contradict already published statistics.

According to analysis by the Institute for Government, government spending on adult social care in 2021/22 was £23.1 billion, making the Chancellor’s £5 billion figure amount to just over 21%, not the 40% he suggests.

IfG data also shows that the additional funding does not come from government spending alone, rather a combination of levers including delays to charging reform and council tax increases.

Further, such increases fail to account for the levels of inflation we have seen since the Chancellor’s first Autumn statement.

I welcome your guidance on this matter, in particular what clarification you can provide on the veracity of the Chancellor’s claim and look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Gwynne MP

Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Karin Smyth MP – NHS waiting lists

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Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Sarah Olney MP – statements on tax burden

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Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Jess Phillips MP – statements on crime

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Karin Smyth MP to Sir Robert Chote – NHS waiting lists

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Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Sir Michael Ellis MP and Andrew Percy MP – Gaza statistics

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Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Andrew Gwynne MP – social care funding

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Jess Phillips MP to Sir Robert Chote – statements on crime

Footnotes

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Sir Michael Ellis MP and Andrew Percy MP to Sir Robert Chote – Gaza statistics

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Letter from Sir Robert Chote to Karin Smyth MP – hospital beds

Source: Urgent and Emergency Care Daily Situation Reports 2023-24

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Andrew Gwynne MP to Professor Sir Ian Diamond – social care funding

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