Recommendations

Unsurprisingly, given the findings above, my first recommendation is that ONS needs a focused and consistent effort to improve core statistics: the statistical system is complex, and many elements need action, which has to be carefully sequenced; past actions appear to me to be too piecemeal, driven by individual failures.

Given this recommendation, I do want to commend the current leadership for their rapid work to develop a strategy for economic and population statistics, which has been published alongside this review today. The strategy has several important properties:

• it is focused on core economic statistics, about which most external concerns have been voiced (but includes population statistics because of their role in weighting sample surveys, and in deriving eg GDP per head);
• it is comprehensive, in the sense that it looks at all the elements of statistics production from registers and classification, through data collection and validation, to production and dissemination;
• it is honest that some necessary improvements will take time to deliver, but sets out what can be done, including improvements now to be delivered in 2025-26 and those which will follow in later years.

The strategy also acknowledges the need for a different way to deliver change, with much greater emphasis on continuous improvement, with the right mixes of skills dedicated to each production area. ONS already has examples of this way of working, and with good results. The new Executive Committee has been central to the rapid assessment both of lower priority work, and to testing the plans for improvement. All of which I commend. I have also spoken to HMT and I am confident that the new strategy can be fully resourced within the agreed Spending Review 2025 settlement announced earlier this month.

My second recommendation, to support this new direction and strengthen delivery confidence yet further, is to change the way ONS is led. Since the passing of the relevant legislation in 2007, the National Statistician has also been the Permanent Secretary for ONS.

These are quite different sets of skills: they have been found in the same individual before, but the combination is rare. I believe the balance of advantage now lies in separating these roles, at least for a temporary period, in order to appoint as ONS Permanent Secretary someone with a track record of leading an operational business, indeed of turning round such an organisation.

I recommend this because I believe most of the problems with core statistics result from inadequacies in the way ONS has made decisions, planned and budgeted, and managed risks. But there are other issues to tackle too:

• the return to working in the office, post pandemic, was not handled well and one of the unions is still operating “action short of a strike”. This needs to be resolved quickly: some recognition of the past poor handling is necessary; but so too is a wider recognition of the benefits of teams spending time together in one place;
• the organisation is, like many others, highly dependent on technology, but responsibilities for this seem to me unnecessarily distributed, and as a result insufficiently effective;
• there appears to be little by way of consistent performance management of individuals;
• ONS relies on some deep technical knowledge, but it is not clear how this is developed and retained, with sufficient incentives for people to keep abreast of new technology
• the organisation’s office locations, mostly outside major cities, and with analyst pay not comparable with other departments, makes it difficult to recruit and retain the necessary skilled staff;
• while there is clarity about the importance of ONS, there is not a consistent and compelling narrative about how the organisation sees and addresses its challenges, and responds to external critiques: this is a necessary cornerstone for effective engagement of staff across ONS, and to motivate and support each person’s contribution.

These sorts of challenges occur in other operational businesses. It would be better, right now, to appoint a new leader who has strong relevant experience from running a similar operational business. The ONS context is, of course, statistical production; but there are many capable statisticians in the organisation, and more now on the Executive Committee. So, temporarily, I do not regard it as essential for the new Permanent Secretary to have deep experience of statistics: there are broader skills required right now, to turn ONS round, and put it on a more sustainable foundation for the future.

The consequence of splitting the roles is the need to find a National Statistician who could: provide statistical advice to the Board and to the Government; provide leadership to the Government Statistical Service; lead engagement with the UK’s broader statistical community; ensure the statistical system works across the whole of the UK; and lead the UK’s engagement with international bodies. This role would then be more similar to roles such as the Chief Medical Officer.

My third recommendation is that various parties use such a turn round period to reflect on the appropriate governance of ONS and of the wider statistical system, and if they conclude that legislation needs to change, to do so well before further appointments are needed.

I described the current governance arrangements earlier. Despite recent challenges, I am reluctant to conclude this model cannot work. It has, after all, worked well before. But it has undoubtedly become more difficult to find the person who can be both the National Statistician and the ONS Permanent Secretary.

I do think it worth considering the opportunities which might be provided to develop those statisticians already holding senior roles within ONS, and elsewhere within the GSS. It is a big leap from these roles to Permanent Secretary. In other parts of the civil service, I have seen conscious choices being made in career development, taking individuals beyond their initial speciality in order to develop broader skills. For ONS leadership succession, such career moves might well take a statistician temporarily into an operational leadership role, at a level which starts to build some of the experience necessary to lead ONS. This might well help with longer term succession, but probably not in the medium term, given the time necessary to acquire new skills.

So, a recombined role in the medium term probably relies on finding someone from a different background, or from abroad. Again, this has been done before.

But if this does not look promising in fairly short order, it might be necessary to revisit the legislation. There are plenty of options available. Personally, in this scenario, I would be attracted to a National Statistician role as Chair of the UK Statistics Authority. In this role, he or she would both carry responsibility for engaging with the users of statistics, and – through oversight of the regulator – the ability to assure both the quality of the statistics produced and how they are used. The leadership of ONS would then naturally be a separate role. There is, though, no immediate rush to decide this if the current roles are temporarily separated: but the Board and other stakeholders should be thinking now about the longer-term options, to give time for any changes to legislation, knowing how hard it will be to find Parliamentary time for this.

Sir Robert Devereux KCB
June 2025

Related links

UK Statistics Authority and Cabinet Office response to the Devereux Review