What percentage of total government expenditure?

41.5% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

Inputs:

• Small changes to data, now include legal and audit services.
• Labour inputs weights updated to align with Full-Time Equivalent staff.

Outputs:

• Inclusion of preventative services commissioned to non-NHS providers.
• Incorporated certain screening services.
• Improved measures for primary care.
• Equivalised unit costs for equivalent treatments across different modes of provision.
• Removal of excess bed days activity.

Quality adjustment:

• Expanded measure of GP patient outcomes.
• Quality and Outcomes Framework used to weight indicators.
• Extend the application of the health gain quality adjustment from elective to non-elective procedures.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

Continue to monitor:

• Data on NHS-funded services contracted from the independent sector.
• Quality of National Cost Collection activity data for selected screening services.
• Development of patient satisfaction surveys.

Work with devolved governments to:

• Improve the coverage of Healthcare services not currently measured in the output for the devolved governments.
• Assess the feasibility of including selected screening services in the output measure.
• Explore the feasibility of applying the improvements on handling equivalent treatment across different modes of provision made for England to the devolved governments.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Evaluate the benefits and costs of switching to the person-level data provided by the Hospital Episode Statistics for measuring hospital output in England.
• Further research to continue to explore the feasibility of improving and expanding the existing Healthcare quality adjustment for waiting times.
• Explore how to improve the measurement of preventative services in Healthcare output, including reviewing potential data sources to ensure consistent application across the range of preventative treatments.
• Investigate whether aspects of the incentives in NHS Payment Scheme can be incorporated in the relative weighting of different services in Healthcare productivity.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

15.8% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

Inputs:

• Improved methodology for weighting labour inputs and new imputation for any missing salary categories.

Outputs:

• Capturing the shift in the compulsory education age to 18 years.
• Better reflecting the conversion of primary schools to academies.
• Capturing the increase in activity from the increase in funding entitlement for pre-primary.
• Updating the treatment of healthcare and teacher training to reflect changes in provision.

Quality adjustment:

• Inclusion of student wellbeing.
• Improved accounting for attainment during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
• Inclusion of Further Education attainment.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

Continue to review:

• If full-time salary data for relevant staff categories for education are being captured in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) post-2020, and whether alternative sources may be needed for occupations no longer available in ASHE.
• If alternative sources of attainment during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are available.

Work with devolved governments to:

• Improve data sources as far as possible, particularly Northern Ireland and their attainment statistics.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Continue to explore the links between education, health expenditure and human capital acquisition, and particularly labour market returns, to better understand the output of these sectors.
• Grading policies change with changing Government Administrations. More research is needed on how this is reflected in productivity statistics.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

9.0% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

General:

• The ONS inputted to the United Nations Review of Classifications of Functions of Government to recommend a further breakdown of the Defence categories.

Inputs:

• A more granular direct measure of labour inputs has been implemented.
• Improvements have been made to the intermediate consumption and capital deflators.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Work with Ministry of Defence to explore their new readiness measure when available and its potential for underpinning output metrics.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Continued research into the measurement of what constitutes Defence output.
• Subsequent research on quality adjustment measures when an output becomes available.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

Policing and Immigration & Citizenship combined = 4.5% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

Inputs:

• More granular police salary data.
• Account for impact of the Police Uplift Programme.
• Reviewed impact of reduced capacity.
• Improved coverage for the devolved governments.
• Improved deflators.

Output:

• Investigated potential data sources and methods for producing a direct output measure.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Continue to explore with Home Office the potential to run an England & Wales Police Activity Survey as part of the ONS’s survey portfolio, and investigate the potential to source similar data for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• Continue to develop direct output measure for policing.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Further investigate data sources to fill existing data gaps in police ‘Public Safety & Welfare’ activities.
• A literature review of the impact of crime prevention activities which fall under the police ‘criminal prevention’ activity category.
• Further research into introducing a combined police crime and police ‘Public Safety & Welfare’ output measure by critically assessing alternative activity and weighting sources.
• Investigation of suitable quality adjustment measures.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

Policing and Immigration & Citizenship combined = 4.5% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

General:

• The ONS inputted to the United Nations review of the Classification of Functions of Government to recommend separating Immigration & Citizenship activities from Policing.

Inputs:

• Identification of inputs measure needs.
• Improved deflators.

Outputs:

• Identification of some sources of activities and associated cost weights

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Implement separate inputs for Immigration & Citizenship from 2004.
• Continue to monitor the deflators used for input to ensure robustness.
• Further research into sources of activities and associated cost weights.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Defining suitable activity measures for the output of Immigration & Citizenship services.
• Research into quality change in this service.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

3.1% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

Inputs:

• Implemented intermediate consumption deflators to all POS services, apart from fire.
• Creation of a direct measure for fire service labour inputs.

Outputs:

• Improved output measures for criminal courts, legal aid, probation and prisons.

Quality adjustment:

• More granular data used for timeliness, in line with improvements to outputs.
• Re-introduced the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic impacted re-offending quality adjustment.
• Improvement of weighting of quality adjustments.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Further development and implementation of improved inputs and output measures, including expanding to cover devolved governments.
• Further research on expenditure weights for the different services in POS output.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Research whether legal aid should be considered an intermediate stage in the provision of justice as opposed to an output in itself.
• Identification of appropriate data to develop a direct measure of labour inputs for each of prison services and court services.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

0.6% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

General:

• Tax Administration has been removed from the ‘Other’ grouping and is now treated as its own services. This should be treated as ‘Official statistics in development’ whilst undergoing further testing.

Inputs:

• HMRC ‘Cost of Collection’ data, adjusted by Government expenditure data, identified as suitable for use.

Outputs:

• Development of experimental revenue adjusted output measure for Taxation.

Quality adjustment:

• Identification of potential data sources for activities and associated cost weights.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Obtain feedback on experimental output measure.
• Look to integrate further tax data, including custom duties, activities to reduce tax evasion and non-compliance.
• Look to further increase coverage of taxes administered locally and in devolved governments.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Investigate the feasibility of extending the time period for Tax Administration productivity measure to pre-2018.
• Investigate the feasibility of Tax Administration quality adjustments.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

1.7% of total government spend in 2021.

What has the Review done?

Outputs:

• Created a new benefit-weighted index for the administration output of Universal Credit and legacy benefits. This should be treated as ‘Official statistics in development’ whilst undergoing further testing.
• Created a cost weighted index for remaining benefits.
• Using total administrative expenditure to weight together the two output indices.
• A method to account for the changes in composition of Universal Credit claims.

Quality adjustment:

• Inclusion of fraud and error rates as a quality adjustment.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Investigate sources to incorporate data on Child and Working Tax Credits, Housing Benefit and Child Benefit in both output and inputs measures of SSA, while making appropriate adjustments to the ‘Other’ grouping of inputs.
• Investigate data availability accounting for benefit administration in Northern Ireland.
• Further refinement of the fraud and error quality adjustment.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Local authority administrative costs for Housing Benefit and concessionary fares need to be fully investigated.
• Continue work towards fully covering SSA across central government departments, local authorities and devolved governments.
• Customer satisfaction and timeliness, as well as their weighting, as Quality Adjustment factors needs further research.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

Local Government is currently a part of ‘other’ grouping. Adult and Children’s Social Care make up 5.7% and 2.7% of total government spend in 2021, respectively.

What has the Review done?

Local Government:

• Early identification of potential data sources for inputs and outputs.

Adult and Children’s Social Care:

• Not prioritised for review given the significant improvements implemented in 2019.
• Further potential improvements identified.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

Children’s Social Care:

• Separate elements where output measures cannot be identified, and estimate output in this area through the “inputs = outputs” methodology until further measures can be developed.
• Periodically investigate the methodology into Children’s Social Care in relation to non-government sectors in order to make further improvements to the measure.
• Investigate new source of data for inputs and output for the devolved governments.

Adult Social Care:

• Investigate the feasibility of using new person-level data collected by NHS England to improve output measures.
• Investigate the user need for an Adult Social Care specific publication.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• A strategy is needed to capture local services that do not sit with other services, reflecting potential change in scope of Environmental services.
• Local government data across the devolved governments should be investigated to create a UK-wide local government services measure.

What percentage of total government expenditure?

Environmental services is currently part of ‘other’ grouping.

What has the Review done?

• Developed a draft categorisation of Environmental Services to underpin future measurement.
• The ONS inputted to the United Nations (UN) review of the Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG) to recommend the creation of a COFOG sector covering Environmental Services, for use in developing measures in future.

What are the recommended incremental next steps?

• Continue to influence the UN Review of COFOG to encourage the creation of a COFOG sector covering Environmental Services.

What are the remaining big issues for research?

• Implement improved Environment measures, in line with new international standards, if they are felt to meet UK needs.