Next Meeting: 5 June 2025

Members present

• Professor David Hand (Chair)
• Professor Paul Allin
• Dame Kate Barker
• Helen Boaden
• Sarah Cumbers
• Professor Sir Ian Diamond
• Ed Humpherson
• Phyllis MacFarlane
• Sarah Moore
• Guy Nason

Additional attendees

• Professor Ronan Lyons (for item 2)
• June Bowman

Secretariat

• Kerri Gourley
• Tom Marsh

Apologies

• Eva Aizpurua
• Professor Paul Boyle

1. Minutes and matters arising

1. Members were welcomed to the meeting. Apologies were received from Prof. Paul Boyle and Eva Aizpurua. The minutes of the meeting on 12 December were approved and actions were updated.

2. Discussion with User (Prof. Ronan Lyons) [NSEUAC(25)01]

1. Prof Ronan Lyons, Clinical Professor of Public Health at Swansea University joined the meeting to reflect on his perspective as a user of statistics. The following key points were made:
   1. Ronan outlined the various research projects he had been involved in, particularly his role as the Co-Director for the SAIL Data Bank, and highlighted the official statistics relevant to his role;
   2. some geographical limitations to the statistics were mentioned, where releases were only for one geographical area, for example England only, without breakdowns for other individual devolved administrations;
   3. the Office for National Statistics (ONS) producing more modelled data down to Lower Layer Super Output Area would be advantageous as well as having more national level statistics and statistics linked to the SAIL Data Bank;
   4. the ONS was working to harmonise statistics across all nations of the UK, but resource limitations were a challenge; and
   5. it was agreed that the ONS would be able to learn from SAIL’s experience of acquiring data from government departments and a further conversation would take place to understand SAILs requirements on linked, national level statistics.

3. UK Statistics Assembly Report [NSEUAC(25)02]

1. Prof. David Hand presented the draft UK Statistics Assembly Report, and the following key points were made:
   1. it was agreed that a breakdown of delegates by sector would be produced and included in the report and the report also recommended that the technology for online participation would need to be improved for a future Assembly;
   2. members discussed the extent to which the edited and anonymised notes and the Slido comments from the Assembly could be included in the report. Despite the rich content of these notes, the committee felt that the report must honour a statement in the participants’ pack that the notes and comments would not be visible to other participants, but only to the ‘Assembly team’, and so should not be included in the report;
   3. how to prioritise the lists of items in the subsections of the ‘conclusions and recommendations’ section of the report, aligning this with the Lievesley Review was discussed, ensuring that the list was concise enough for the UK Statistics Authority to digest;
   4. topics included in recommendations would consider not only the weighting of opinion, but what would make the greatest long-term impact and the report should not give equal weight to all recommendations;
   5. it would be important that the overall flavour of the discussions in the sessions was captured and reviewed by the chairs of each session where possible;
   6. the ONS’ Spending Review submission to HM Treasury would include recommendations from the Assembly report so it would be important to reflect the Assembly’s views on high-level prioritisation;
   7. the report would set out three to four key recommendations from the National Statistician’s Expert User Advisory Committee, but it was important that the UK Statistics Authority considered all recommendations in the report;
   8. it was agreed that members of the Assembly Delivery Group would not be named within the report;
   9. it was noted that the Assembly and the report would take account of implications for the wider nonofficial statistics system and not merely the ONS;
   10. it was also agreed that chairs’ of the sessions comments would be fed into the report; and
   11. iterations would be made to the report and would be published on the UK Statistics Authority Website after the February meeting of UK Statistics Authority Board.

4. Any other business

1. The next meeting was due to take place in London on 5 June 2025.

The Independent report on the 2025 UK Statistics Assembly has been published since this meeting.